


Broken Pieces, Lonely Places

by PaperCraneCastles



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Cal Kestis Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Padawan Cal Kestis, Rigger Cal Kestis, Scrapper's Guild, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25089919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperCraneCastles/pseuds/PaperCraneCastles
Summary: Cal Kestis finds himself alone and running for his life, having caught the attention of the terrifying Sith Lord Darth Vader. As he runs, he remembers his life before Eno Cordova, before BD-1 and the Mantis and the holocron, and wonders how a failed Padawan turned scrap rat scurrying across Bracca became the Empire's Most Wanted.Origin fic. Cal-centric, explores the time between Order 66 and the events of Jedi:Fallen Order.
Comments: 52
Kudos: 80





	1. Thunderstorm

**Author's Note:**

> OH BOY. Here we go. This fic has been rumbling around in my head since my first playthrough of Fallen Order. There's so little canon information available about Bracca and the Scrapper's Guild, and I thought, Wren, this is RIPE for some fun personal interpretation. So here it is, the first chapter of Cal's journey from traumatised Padawan to Scrapper's Guild rigger! I have no idea if anyone else wants this kind of content, but please be gentle, this is the first fic I've written in about...ten years.

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

Cal Kestis was used to the rain. The sound of it, the smell of it, the feel of it pounding down on him as he hurried through the forest. Springtime on Algara II was apparently quite dismal, and he was only here because the planet was right in the middle of the Corellian run, and it would be easier to pick up a ship. All the better to get him further away from the Mantis. He and Cere had planted themselves very firmly on Darth Vader's radar during their escape from Fortress Inquisitorius, and that radar, Cal was discovering, was not a particularly pleasant place to be. They had elected to split up, just for a little while, until they could find somewhere out in wild reaches of Hutt space, away from the long arm of the Empire. Cere had hinted that they could join up with the rebellion, now that they had abandoned the idea of restarting the Jedi order. Cal had been living on a rock for five years, and hadn't even heard of any rebellion, but it made sense. Not everyone bought into the Empire's propaganda. 

Beedee peeped from where he clung to the young Jedi's shoulders, and, broken from his thoughts, Cal huffed a laugh. “Yeah, you said it. Nothing like a bit of rain to cheer us up, hey?” Another series of chirps, and Cal hummed. “Yeah, it does remind me of the tomb on Zeffo. Though maybe with a bit more...thunder.” He glared up at the sky, rain splattering on his face as the dark clouds rolled above him, occasional flashes of green-tinted lightning illuminating the dense forest around him. He was relying on the Force to guide him through the tangled undergrowth for the most part – his escape pod had crash landed in the middle of a swamp. “Though the ah...the swamp is giving me flashbacks to Kashyyyk.” Beedee trilled in amusement. “I'm glad you think it's funny, you're not the one knee deep in mud.” He laughed, warmth blooming in his chest despite the chilly rain. He wasn't alone, at least. Beedee was with him. He blew out a tired breath, pausing to better discern the best path through the muddy chaos.

Typical. A small planet with a population of a billion beings, and Cal's little escape pod had managed to find the only uninhabited wasteland it had to offer. He pushed sopping wet hair out of his face with a sigh, pushing forwards. As much as he'd joked with Beedee...this whole situation brought back memories not just of Kashyyyk, but of another stormy night, and another escape pod. Cal had been a very different person back then. Just a boy, lost and alone and grieving in the rain.

**\- Bracca, 19BBY -**

He was frozen. Half in fear, and half from the cold, Cal couldn't move. His Master's body still lay sprawled on the floor of the crumpled escape pod, and it was only through virtue of the blaster wounds near instantly cauterising on the Lasat's body that the floor wasn't sticky with more blood. Cal shivered, breath hitching as he cowered from the sound of rain drumming against the crumpled wall of the pod. One hand cupped his cheek, which ached and burned from the blaster wound he had caught to the side of it, the pain pulsing down his neck and hot to touch. His other hand held Jaro Tapal's lightsaber tightly, knuckles white, fingers almost numb with it. He had no concept of how much time had passed since their crash landing on the rocky wasteland the _Albedo Brave_ had been stationed over, and his legs and arms were cramping from how tightly he had curled his body inwards. He flinched as a crack of thunder roared overhead, and the sound of the rain intensified against the small pod. The crash had caused a small leak, and he could see the water beginning to seep inside, dripping down the inside wall of the pod. He forced his tense, battered body to move, unpeeling sticky fingers from his face and wincing as his limbs protested. He pressed himself against the very back of the pod and stifled a sob with his filthy sleeve. The movement had fired up his nerves, and jolted him out of his daze, which of course, only meant he was now staring hopelessly at Master Tapal's lifeless form, massive and still.

It was his fault. He hadn't been fast enough. He'd failed, and his Master, a Jedi who, to Cal, had seemed so strong and sturdy and invincible, was dead because of him. He stifled another sob, terrified that the next noise would bring someone looking. He didn't know what someone – a clone trooper, a Bracca native...all he knew was that right now, he didn't want to be found. The sound of blaster fire still rang in his ears, and whenever he closed his eyes, he could see clones decked in white and gold shouting for backup and pointing their blasters at him. 

_“I've got eyes on the little one!”_

The little one. _Their_ little one. They had been Cal's friends, his protectors, men who had told him stories and taught him card games, and smuggled him sweets. The thirteenth were combat ready, but owing to Cal's young age, they had been stationed above Bracca deliberately, a quieter warzone (if such a thing existed). He had never even heard such close quarters fire before. It had been so loud, and his escape through the maintenance tunnels so abjectly terrifying. How could they turn on him? How could they turn on Master Tapal, their General who commanded such admiration and respect? 

Another flash of lightning illuminated the pod, and Cal squeaked in fear, flinching against the wall. His hand brushed his Master's saber again, and he gasped as he lost control of his psychometry, and was flung into an echo of blue flashes, a call of “Keep moving, Padawan!” and the frantic last gasp of a clone, speared by the brilliant blade as Master Tapal bulldozed his way through the Brave to the escape pods. All he had been thinking about was saving his Padawan, and the young Jedi almost drowned in the depth of Tapal's affection – his determination to save little Cal Kestis from whatever foulness had befallen their ship. Cal ripped his hand away from the saber and forced himself to breathe, trembling violently. He had been so good at controlling the echoes before, the touch of his psychometry well practised and carefully honed by dozens of lessons with the perplexing, roguish yet undeniably talented Master Vos. 

Master Tapal had never really approved of Master Vos, but he was undeniably the only one who could help Cal control his psychometry, even if their acquaintance had been brief. Quinlan Vos had left the Order shortly before Cal and his Master had been posted to Bracca. He didn't know where the Kiffar was now. Sith hells, he wasn't even sure where he was. Bracca was a literal scrapheap, only a warzone because of it's relative closeness to several of the trade lanes and...something political to do with the Scrappers Guild sympathising with the Separatists. He didn't really understand the politics of it all, but he and Master Tapal had been stationed here for almost a year, and he'd barely been allowed to leave the ship. He rubbed his arms, crawling towards the door and casting another look at his Master's body. His breath hitched. He couldn't leave him like this. It would be dishonourable after everything Tapal had done to save him. Cal pressed his hand to the door, trying to call on the Force to help him open it, only to find a yawning, terrifying void instead. He reeled, nausea rising into his throat as he shivered. It felt a little like his early Padawan days, when his skinny little ten year old self had been so nervous and unsure, the Force slipping like water from his grasp as he wondered if he was worthy of Master Tapal's attention. His connection to the Force felt stilted, damaged, and he realised he had no idea how to fix it. Horror crept up his spine as he used his own body strength to push the door instead. Despite his lack of food and the cramped, terrifying ride in the pod, that at least had not deserted him, and he heaved the great durasteel door open, flinching at the hiss of the airlock. Immediately, the rainstorm invaded the space, soaking his sleeves and mixing with the tears on his face. 

Maybe he should have waited out the storm. Then again, when he dragged up his memories of glanced over holopads, if he remembered right, the rainstorms on Bracca were famous for lasting for weeks at a time. That... left it as a choice between drowning, and starving. And he knew he couldn't stay in this pod any longer. He sniffed, swiping at his eyes with his wet sleeve, climbing out of the pod. Immediately, he stumbled and went sprawling into a foot of dark mud, and he choked out a miserable sob as the rain drove down on his back, the sudden cold a shock to his body. Weak. He was weak. Tapal had died for...for this. For him, a pathetic little Padawan crying his eyes out over a bit of rain and mud. He steeled his resolve, gathering his strength and pushing himself free of the mud. He struggled to his feet, peering through the darkness and the driving rain. They had landed on a plain of some kind, muddy and scattered with a few wilted, sorry looking trees that bowed and bent in the rain. A chill wind whipped at Cal's hair and wet clothes, but it wasn't unbearable, and it was almost a welcome reprieve from the stifling heat of the maintenance tunnels he could see when he closed his eyes. 

He looked out over the flat landscape, the hulking shapes of mountains just visible in the distance. Most of Bracca was industrialised, but some muddy swamps and rocky, lifeless mountains still remained, their silty basins too dangerous to build on. This must be one of them, murky and dark and uninhabited.

When he staggered back the other side of the pod, he could see an enormous scrapheap rising out of the gloom ahead of him, perhaps four clicks away, little lights peppered across the scrap, glinting through the darkness. The planet's inhabitants lived in their heaps, building great, warren-like cities and towns out of the scrap as they weaselled away, breaking their ships and building new ones. A great swathe of people lived here, scrappers, engineers, builders, welders, and an army of droids, and from what little he knew from his observations with Master Tapal, it was...pretty lawless, governed loosely by the Scrappers Guild. That was about all he knew, other than it was a planet the Republic had wanted to retain control of.

He shivered, the rain soaking him through the layers of his clothing. Turning back to the escape pod, he hauled himself back inside and began the laborious task of dragging Master Tapal out of it. He was twice Cal's size and even heavier once his head and shoulders were out of the pod and soaked through with the rain. It took half an hour before Cal realised he should probably have taken the armour off first, as he sagged against the metal wall, the body of his Master only half dragged from the pod. Cal's cold, trembling fingers found Tapal's gloved ones for comfort, though they were lifeless and limp under his pale hands. He bit back a sob, squeezing and clinging to the older Jedi's hand for a moment before desperately trying to find that calm focus he'd so admired in his Master. He had started now, so he'd finish, and it took every ounce of his strength to pull the Lasat warrior from the pod. He skittered back as the heavy body splashed into the mud which already caked Cal from head to toe, and he drew another shaky little breath as his Master began to slowly sink. It seemed like such a wicked, worthless end for such a proud Jedi. “I'm...I'm sorry, Master...” He choked, and stars above, was that his voice? He sounded so scratchy and hoarse, throat sore from the hysteria of the escape. He'd screamed, a lot, and now he ached, lifting a hand to rub his throat, smearing dripping mud across his skin and shuddering with revulsion. He sniffed and tried again. “I'm sorry. I couldn't...couldn't do it in time. It's all my fault. What...what am I supposed to do now, Master?” His breath hitched.

Master Tapal's sinking body had no reply for him of course. He was alone, for the first time he could ever really remember. He had always had his Master, or the clones, or his fellow Initiates in the Temple. Someone to make noise, to exchange glances with, to look to for help. The world was achingly quiet despite the rumbling thunder and the roar of the rain, and a terrible sense of loneliness wrapped itself around Cal like an insidious vice. He took a few steps towards the body, falling to his knees beside him. He had no idea how you were supposed to bury a Master, or even bury a fallen Jedi, but he couldn't leave the heroic Lasat general with nothing. He swiped his eyes again, looking over at the pod, inside which Master Tapal's abandoned lightsaber lay. He crawled through the mud to pick it up, clamping down on his psychometry and pushing himself to return to Tapal just as the mud began to close over his peaceful face. Cal palmed the saber, moments from dropping it into the mud, but couldn't bring himself to lose the last part of his Master's legacy along with him. Instead, he ignited the blade, bright and dazzlingly blue. Squinting away from the sudden light, he severed his little red Padawan braid, letting it fall into his waiting hand. It was sopping wet and caked with mud, but it was all he had to offer the man who had been like a father to him for three years. He placed the braid on top of the Lasat's chest moments before it sank into the mud, taking the braid with it.

He clung to the saber, shutting off the blade and plunging himself and Tapal back into the darkness of the night, the only light remaining the soft, bluish glow of the pod's emergency lighting. It cast its sombre hue over Cal as the mud bubbled a little before growing still, the shallow little swamp the only grave Cal could give his Master.

“I'm sorry.” Cal whispered hoarsely, one last time before he dragged his eyes away and waded free of the swamp and onto what looked to be a muddy track of some kind, leading through the darkness through the rain towards the towering scrapheap ahead of him. Something howled suddenly, high above him, and he flinched, shoulders hunching towards his neck as he gazed up into the rain, fright written all over his freckled face, green eyes wide with startled fear. Dizzyingly high above him, a train rattled on a thin monorail that had been rendered almost invisible by the rain, lights flashing and metal groaning as it screeched along the railway. Forcing his tense, terrified hindbrain to relax, Cal breathed out. No-one could have seen him from so high up. Bracca was covered in those thin monorails – they were used to haul scrap between the yards and the ports. He had no way of knowing how far away the port was – the planet-wide maps he had studied with Master Tapal gave no true indication of distance, at least, not to a thirteen year old Padawan who was far more interested in hearing the troopers telling their exciting war stories of how they had secured the port in the first place. He watched as the train hurtled past, gazing after it until the lights winked out into the distance, and the noise of screeching metal gave way to the ever-present rumble of thunder and spatter of the rain. Wearily, he began his steady walk towards the scrapheap again, a flash of lightning illuminating his path. The lightning was frequent enough that he didn't need the lightsaber to light up the track ahead, so instead, he clutched it to his chest. It was much heavier than his own, and far bigger, much too unwieldy for him to use anyway. Cutting off a braid and actually swinging it in a fight were two very different things. He needed...not to fight. Not to raise a fuss.

Within minutes of starting up his walk again, the cold began to pinch at him, needling and incessant, and when he breathed in, he could feel his throat catch, making him cough and splutter. If he didn't get somewhere warm soon, he was going to get sick. His Padawan robes were drenched through, and though they were designed to be hard wearing, he hadn't been wearing any outdoor clothes when they'd been forced to flee the _Brave_ , and he was beginning to feel it. Once, maybe, Master Tapal would have laughed, gentle and fond, and showed him how to use the Force to warm himself. But Master Tapal wasn't here, he was buried half a click back in stinking mud, no light left in his eyes and no longer able to take care of him. And what did Cal know about looking after himself? Certainly, Jedi were taught to be independent and self sufficient, but Cal was thirteen, he'd been a long way from that stage. Sure, he could survive a day or two on his own, had had to on several occasions before. This was different, and Cal had no idea how to deal with it.

_“This war...isn't over, my Padawan.”_

Unbidden, his Master's last words came back to him as he stumbled through the rain and the mud, and he shook his head, blinking back more tears. The grief was almost overwhelming, adding an acute layer to his exhausted misery. His thoughts drifted wildly between stupid little facts about Bracca as his mind tried to make sense of what he was doing, and reliving his Master's final moments.

_“Hold the line. Wait...for the Jedi Council's signal.”_

What signal? How would they find him? How would anyone know where to look if their ship had been destroyed? He had seen it blow through the transparisteel screen, the reactor's explosion rocking the pod as he'd scrambled into a corner, clutching his Master's lightsaber to his chest as he'd screamed his terror and grief into the void of space. And what if what had happened to him and his Master, had happened to others? Would anyone even be left to come for him?

_“Remember. Trust only in the Force.”_

Cal didn't even want to try reaching for the Force. While trying to move his Master's body, he'd tried to borrow strength from within, and the nausea had been the same as when he'd tried to push the door open. He remembered screaming in anger, the emotion foreign and dark as he'd watched Master Tapal stumble back into the pod, his chest littered with blaster wounds. That anger had sent the Force roaring through his skinny limbs, freezing the troopers in place so they could escape. Now he couldn't even reach without feeling sick. With a thrill of fear, he realised he was afraid of it. He had broken his connection to it. If he couldn't use the Force, how was he supposed to trust it? Abruptly, he tripped over a gnarled little tree root and went sprawling in the mud again. He had lost count of how many times his legs had betrayed him on this solitary trek through the weathered, swampy landscape. He had nothing, just the clothes on his back, and his Master's saber. No credits, no cloak, no communicator, no Force...and nowhere to go.

Cal Kestis was alone.


	2. Padawan Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your lovely responses to the first chapter! Please keep liking and commenting, every single comment makes my day :D

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

By the time Cal found a settlement, his legs were killing him. A twenty click hike through knee deep mud was no-one's idea of fun, and he groaned with relief as a solid rock track replaced the swamp. Beedee chirped with excitement as the small town appeared out of the rain, the lights of the houses and small taverns blinking in welcome. “Yep, definitely, buddy. Warm drink and a warm bed. We'll try to find a transport off this rock in the morning.”

Beedee whistled, and Cal laughed. “Yep. See those green lights? That's a landing pad, which means it's got a port.” He reached to scuff the little droid's head fondly as they dodged a pair of strange little vehicles with three wheels and ancient looking frames that hurtled past, stacked to the brim with boxes. Cal didn't look twice – these peoples' business was their own. Algara II was a strict planet with an even stricter class system, and he didn't want to find himself on the wrong side of planetary law. It was bad enough being a galactic fugitive, he didn't need individual planets getting involved. Pushing his sleeve up to show a gruff Trandoshan doorman his guild tattoo, he ducked into the closest cantina, pulling up his sopping wet hood to give himself a touch of anonymity. Sometimes, being a scrapper had advantages, even here on a mid rim world. Whilst the Scrapper's Guild operated mainly in the outer rim with the Hutts, their reach was wide despite the tangles they had had with the Empire in the early days. He thumbed the tattoo thoughtfully as he sat at a table in the back corner, sinking gratefully into the chair.

A middle-aged Pantoran female in brown and tan work clothes approached his table. “Can I help you?”

He startled a little, reaching out gently with the Force to gauge her intentions. It came so naturally now, right along with the suspicion of everyone that wasn't a friend. She blinked at him expectantly. Just a barmaid, it seemed. “Uh, yeah.” He blurted after a few seconds of awkward silence. “Can I get a caf, please and...do you have a room for the night?” 

“Sure thing, honey. Rooms are twelve credits a night, and as for caf, you can have Raka or Lima spiced, what do you fancy?” She grinned in that friendly manner bar staff galaxy wide had, tilting her head to one side. She was pretty, and looked a little out of place amongst all the native Xan and the humans that peppered the bar.

“Just Raka is fine, thanks.” Cal smiled back at her, and her tattoos crinkled as her face creased a little with mirth.

“Take your hood down, sweetie. You'll stick out less without it.” She winked, and Cal flushed faintly, pushing back his hood as she sauntered back to the bar. The young Jedi fished around in his pocket for credits, pausing to nudge Beedee fondly. Thanks to Greez and Cere, he had plenty of money to get by with until they could meet up again. He pushed the credit pieces across the table, counting them out and frowning faintly as he pocketed the rest. This kind of skulking around was so much easier with money. Everyone rushed to help you when they knew they would get paid. It hadn't been so easy before he met the crew of the Mantis. He remembered with a wince that the first time he'd been stumbling around as a fugitive on a strange planet he'd not had a credit to his name.

**\- Bracca, 19BBY -**

Cal was so cold, he thought the rain might actually have seeped into his bones, chilling him from the inside out. He hugged his arms, huddled against a graffiti covered steel door, bolted shut but set back in an alley wall on the very edge of the huge city he had seen from the escape pod. It might be late at night, but the city was still busy, and he could only watch from his little alleyway as beings of all shapes and sizes hurried about their business. The clothes they wore were universally drab, work clothes, functional and thick and covered in grime. And much more suited to this kind of weather than his drenched Padawan robes. He knew he must look a complete state, freshly wounded, still streaked with filth from the swamp that didn't seem to want to come off despite the driving rain. At least he had found a small awning to huddle under, so the rain wasn't drowning him anymore. 

His mind was still reeling in shock and fear, his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he caught his breath, the city moving around him as though in slow motion. The rumble of a terrestrial train, one much smaller than the durasteel beasts flying high above him, vibrated somewhere off to his left, and he flinched at the sound, glancing around and peering down the narrow, winding alleyway. The buildings either side of him seemed to close in when he looked up, and he couldn't see the dark, stormy sky for all the struts of metal binding them together, rising higher and higher. Everything was made out of scrap metal, bits and pieces sticking out every which way, bolted on for ease of construction rather than any kind of design. It was nothing like Coruscant's clean, vast spires. The street itself was like the rest of the ground level – muddy and rocky, occasional stretches of sheet metal breaking up the rough terrain as the city climbed up the side of the natural mountain, clinging to it like a great steel beast. He could see ships high above him, almost unrecognisable amidst the twisting structures of the scrapper city.

He couldn't stay here all night. He needed to find a place to sleep. He was utterly exhausted, the escape, and the flight, and the trek through the mud had rendered him all but useless, and he pushed himself away from the bolted doorway and stumbled out into the street, not even sure what he was looking for. Shelter in a city this big shouldn't be difficult to find, and he forced himself to drag up memories of his early survival training. If this were Coruscant, where would he go if the Temple was compromised? That had been the exercise. 

Shelter and food. A roof over his head, something warm, and something to eat. He drew in a deep, if slightly shaky breath and tried to calm his mind. All of these things would have been so much easier with a pocketful of credits, but neither he nor Master Tapal had been carrying any. Of course they hadn't. What need had the Jedi for credits on a Venator battleship? He shivered, keeping his head down as he moved through the streets and further into the city.

He paused at the entrance to a train station, run down and as pasted with graffiti as all the other available surfaces. The sign was in Huttese first, then basic, and it simply said 'Choria, lower substation'. Choria was Bracca's capital city, Cal was almost certain of it, the knowledge dredged from lessons up on the bridge of the _Brave._ A city built around a shipbreaking yard, which explained the chaotic winding streets and the buildings made of twisted durasteel in different colours and textures. It was a gentle sounding name for a place that was anything but gentle. But Choria was where he was, so this would have to do. He hung back to watch beings coming and going into the station, using some kind of communicator on their wrists and arms to gain access through the barriers. 

Well, he wasn't getting in there.

Wrinkling his nose, he slunk past the station, keeping close to the wall as his green eyes darted this way and that. The later he was out, the less people would be around, so he kept his pace slow, not wanting to attract attention. A few streets beyond the station, he found an old warehouse of some kind, with grimy windows and more steel doors. Windows meant transparisteel, though, which was more easy to break into, so he skirted the building, checking for signs of light and life from within. One of the higher windows was shattered, and as he squinted up through the rain, he picked out several handholds and footholds. It was climbable. Cal considered himself a reasonable climber, so after a moment's hesitation, he began to scale the wall, forcing his numb fingers to cooperate through sheer force of will as he scrambled up the side of the building to the twenty foot high shattered window. When he braced himself between the building and what looked like a half rusted off gantry, he eyed his window. The hole in the transparisteel wasn't nearly as big as it had looked, and he had to wrap his hand in his robe to smash a bit more space for himself before he could wriggle through.

Pain lanced up his arm as he leaned too heavily on the broken glass, and he winced, biting his lip. In a stroke of luck, the drop on the other side was barely three feet, and he tumbled onto the dusty steel floor, clutching his hand and hissing in discomfort. He squinted at the wound, the murky darkness making it impossible to guess the severity of it, even when he tilted it towards the neon orange streetlight outside the window. Well, there wasn't much he could do about it in the dark, so he tore off a strip of his soaking wet sleeve and loosely bandaged his hand, wrapping it as tightly as he could to staunch the bleeding before finally looking up to take stock of his new surroundings. It was quiet, and blissfully dry, and he followed a small corridor to a set of gantry stairs, under which sat the warehouse. It was mostly empty but for a few boxes, and looked as abandoned inside as it had looked when he'd found it. He didn't waste much more time exploring, too tired to contemplate anything further than finding somewhere to sleep. 

He dragged one of the boxes out and pulled it behind the staircase, breaking it down and lying it on the floor, before he took off his outermost layer of robes and laid them out in the dust beside him where, hopefully, they would dry by the morning. He didn't have any choice but to sleep in the rest of his clothes, and he sent a prayer to the Force thanking the Jedi for their love of layers. Curling up under the stairs, he tucked himself into as small a ball as he could, and passed out, giving into his exhaustion.

His dreams were disjointed and frightening, murky and dark, filled with blaster fire, flames and falling debris. He watched his Master stumble back and fall into the pod over and over, and his sleep was uneasy, restless as he tossed and turned, shivering on the makeshift cardboard bed.

With morning came a fierce stiffness as he lay awake, gazing up at the gantry staircase. Soft, natural light had just begun to filter through the grimy windows, replacing the eerie orange glow of the bright street lamps. If the warehouse had looked decrepit in the dark, it looked positively dangerous now, large sections of the roof having caved in. Dark puddles of rainwater gathered underneath these sections, rivulets of it trickling towards the back of the building, suggesting an uneven floor. The storm, at least, seemed to have subsided, and Cal sat up, wincing as his shoulders complained against the movement. He still felt chilled and tired, and his throat felt raw, and he was pretty certain he'd given himself a cold by sleeping in wet clothes, but there was nothing to be done about it now. He was mostly dry, and he pulled on his outermost layers, grimacing at how stiff and filthy they felt. Master Tapal's lightsaber he slid up between the two layers of his pant leggings, tucked into the tightest layer and folded into the fabric before he tugged his boots back on. It was a bit awkward, slightly too long for him to easily bend his knee, but it would be utterly stupid to put it on his belt in broad daylight. He just had to hope he didn't need to pull it out to defend himself in a hurry.

He'd been avoiding looking at his cut hand so far, but the strip of fabric he'd torn off his sleeve didn't look too badly caked, so, biting his lip against the sting, he tugged it off to inspect the damage. He was relieved, and just a little surprised to find no infection, the cut clean across his palm. He must have been clenching his fists overnight, as there was barely any staining on his makeshift bandage. He had been lucky. With no medical supplies and no-one he could turn to for help, an infection could mean death. And with his connection to the Force so difficult and foggy, he couldn't risk reaching in to heal himself. He wasn't ready for that head spinning nausea from before, and he was afraid to try. Instead, another strip of his sleeve later and he was clambering back up and out of his smashed window, wriggling through the gap and scrambling nimbly down the side of the building, remembering yesterday's footholds. Dropping the last few feet, he landed in a crouch, faintly hoping that wherever Master Tapal was, he would be proud of Cal for surviving that first night.

Dusting his filthy tunic off, he stepped out into the streets with a quiet yawn. Choria looked a lot less frightening in the light of day, though just as chaotic. There was more colour to be seen now, scraped, faded painted metal scattered amongst the grey steel as he picked his way back towards the station. He couldn't help but look up again, curious what the twisted structures looked like in the light of day. Choria's buildings were all high and warren-like, all interconnected. It was hard to see where one scrapheap finished and another began, and there was ver little sense of unity to the architecture. Shaking his head a little at the dizzy chaos, he continued to weave through the narrow, winding streets until he reached the station. It was easy enough to slip between the beings walking in and out of it and into the lobby, and his confidence grew as the sun rose, casting a pale orange-gold light through the high, mismatched windows of the train station building. Sending a quiet apology up to the Force, the stars, anyone or anything that was listening, he slipped a hand into the pocket of an unsuspecting Mirialan traveller, lifting a couple of loose credit notes. He didn't consider himself a thief, but his stomach physically hurt with how hungry he was, and he needed a cloak, and some clothes to better blend in. His small size made this kind of thing easy, and it wasn't like it wasn't something he had been taught – though he wondered how his crechemasters would feel about his practical application. Their training had focused on slipping weapons from within cloaks, or holodisks from terminals without alerting their owners. Not money from innocent pockets. 

Still. Needs must, and he palmed the notes in his hand, feeling simultaneously elated that it had worked, and slightly bad that he had taken something that belonged to another. He had to believe that this...didn't make him a bad person. Just a desperate one. Cal scrunched the notes into the deep pocket of his robe, pushing down his guilt, and slipped into the station. A little stall was selling some sort of local hotcake that looked like a cross between a bread roll and a pie. Whatever it was it smelled amazing, the scent of it making his stomach rumble, so he bought one along with a couple of bottles of water, keeping his eyes down and his hand steady as he swapped a stolen note for the cake and a fistful of coins. Huddling back down against the wall of the station, he watched the flow of pedestrian traffic as the trains rumbled in and out of the station. They seemed reasonably frequent, and the population was incredibly diverse, though as ever, a large chunk was human. He was careful not to eat too quickly – he didn't know how long he might need to make his stolen credits last, but whatever mystery meat was in this thing, it felt like the best thing he'd ever eaten. 

No-one even spared him a glance, and he was grateful for the lack of attention. He never in his life wanted to feel...hunted, the way he had on the _Brave._ Shuddering at the memory, he pushed the thoughts from his mind. They weren't helping. He drank the whole of the first bottle of water, and clutched the second one close as he stood, wandering back out onto the street. Now he was fed, he felt brave enough to explore a little wider than the station, and he tried to figure out which ramshackle buildings were shops and which were tenement blocks. It wasn't exactly easy, not like on Coruscant, where everything was neatly labelled in twenty different languages. There was Huttese scrawled everywhere, but he wasn't exactly fluent in an Outer Rim language that didn't really exist in the Core. 

Drawing in a shallow breath and trying to hold his nerve, he kept moving, watching which places the workers ducked in and out of. It seemed as though the lower levels were largely residential, and the work happened high above him. The noise was pretty intense, metallic screeching and groaning clashing with shouted conversations in a hundred languages. If Cal weren't so nervous about the entire situation he might have found it fascinating. He'd certainly have enjoyed a trip like this with his Master to keep him safe...

A swell of nausea roiled in his belly. No, he definitely didn't want to think about Jaro Tapal. Not now. It was too raw, too traumatic to consider revisiting those memories. Pausing to close his eyes and centre himself, he opened them again a second later to find himself in front of a garment shop. Everything looked pretty rough, worn leathers and work gloves and dark cloaks in all shapes and sizes, but none of it was expensive. He squeezed his fingers around the credit notes in his pocket, and took a moment to build up his confidence before stepping inside.

Most of his credits (and a short, slightly teasing lesson in haggling from a bewilderingly pleasant Rodian cloth trader) later, he was one dark tan cloak and a single, simple change of clothes better off. His Padawan robes and lightsaber were balled up and shoved roughly into a small, second hand leather sling bag, and he felt...lighter, as though his successes had lifted some of the weight from his shoulders. He didn't have much left, but he had achieved what his training had always told him was necessary: shelter, food and warmth. The clothes were surprisingly soft for leather padded wear, and definitely well worn, but they were warm, and most importantly, not caked in mud and blood, a definite improvement on his ruined Jedi robes.

Now all he had to do was wait for some kind of signal from the Jedi Council, and hopefully, he'd be picked up and taken home.

If he tried to think of it as an adventure, maybe...he'd feel less hopeless, and sad. His throat closed up a little and he felt his lip wobble, before he mentally kicked himself. No tears, his Master would have said. You're too old for tears. Master Tapal had been so no-nonsense, so...strong. Cal wasn't strong. Cal was lost. 

His feet took him back towards his warehouse hideout, and he scaled the wall once more, jumping down into the vast room and taking his time exploring the rest of the space. There wasn't much to see, just stacks of boxes and a locked room that looked like some sort of office. He didn't think there was a better place to sleep than the one he'd already found, so he dragged several more boxes under the staircase, and relived his days of fort building with his fellow initiates in the Temple creche to give himself a little more cover. It was good to have things to focus on, and Bracca didn't seem quite as terrifying as it had last night.

He sat back on his haunches, considering what to do next. He would need more credits, and he didn't want to have to keep stealing if he could help it, which meant he needed to find work. Bracca seemed like the sort of place where a thirteen year old human could find something that would earn him a few credits, he just had to find it. Straightening up, he hid Master Tapal's lightsaber in the folds of his new clock, which was a much more comfortable space than in his leggings. His Padawan robes, he stuffed behind the box. They were a dead giveaway if any of the clones came after him, and he never wanted to see another blaster pointed at his face again! 

Curiosity led him back outside again, and he felt like he was beginning to build up a half decent knowledge of his immediate surroundings. He made it as far as the station, but was startled by a loud voice close to his ear. “There you are you little scrap rat – this a regular place for you?” Someone seized his wrist and pulled hard enough to send him sprawling, the weight of his new bag unbalancing him. His survival instincts kicked in as he was dragged back to his feet, and he lashed out, terror roaring in his ears as he twisted to see his assailant. For a moment, he couldn't place the very _angry_ looking green-skinned Mirialan who had accosted him, until with a thrill of horror he realised it was the man he had pickpocketed this morning. He was shoved hard back into the arms of a second, equally angry Mirialan as the first one spat a mouthful of brackish, dark blood onto the floor. Cal's wild swing must have caught him, but he couldn't summon any satisfaction for the fear that almost swallowed him as his frantic efforts to grasp for the Force met with nothing but swells of nausea and that terrible void. “You'll pay for that, you dirty thief.” The Mirialan snarled, drawing a thin hunting knife from his sleeve. 

Oh, Cal was in trouble.


	3. The Recruiter

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

The room was small, but not uncomfortable. Cal lay sprawled on his back on the narrow bunk, Beedee switched off and snoozing on his pillow. Even sleeping, he couldn't bear to be more than a few feet from Cal, his devotion deeper than any droid he had ever known. He smiled faintly, drawing in a long, slow breath. The quiet of the evening was pleasant at least, not like Coruscant or Bracca, where night-time never meant quiet sleeping. It was just another work shift. 

The middle aged Pantoran barmaid, as it had turned out, was the owner of the little inn, and she had walked him up the narrow wooden staircase herself and showed him to the bedroom, leaning on the door frame. “My name's Sheera, kid. Sheera Varis. You let me know if you need anything, alright?” 

“Ah...yes ma'am, thank you...?” Cal had been a little mystified, until she'd nodded at the half concealed tattoo on his arm. 

“You're a Rigger, right? Got the build for it.” Her golden brown eyes softened as he had blinked at her a little stupidly. “Like my husband did.” She clarified. “Could climb any tree, mountain or battered old scrapped ship. He was a good man. Whatever your deal is, whatever you're running from? You're safe here. Sleep well.”

Then she had gone, and Cal was left to his thoughts, and this very long and sleepless night. The chronometer on the wall showed a very early hour of the morning, and the darkness outside stretched for miles out towards the heavily forested valley he had crashed in. His gaze shifted to the window, and he looked out to where the planet's two moons tried valiantly to break through the heavy cloud that still drenched the ground with their thundery drizzle. In their faint light, he traced the outline of his tattoo with his eyes. His fingers followed the motion, running over the inked shapes and counting the pieces of the sigil. It was supposed to be a symbol of belonging, but...he hadn't felt like he'd belonged with the Guild at first. He had been so very out of place on Bracca, but he supposed being part of the Scrapper's Guild had offered him a safety line – a network for him to be a part of. Still...it had felt, at the time, like his identity as a Jedi had been torn apart.

**\- Bracca, 19BBY -**

The Force continued to elude Cal as he tried to break free of his Mirialan captors. There were three of them, all of them much bigger than him, and he could feel how angry they were. They dragged him off the main street and into a narrow alley not unlike his initial hiding place the night before, shoving him up against the wall. “Well now, let's see how well you do in a proper fight, scrap rat.” The one he'd stolen from snarled in his face, that knife painfully close to his eyes.

That seemed like an invitation to Cal, and as frightened as he was, he was a Jedi Padawan and a soldier, and he wasn't going to take this like a scared youngling. He lashed out, catching the man's throat with a swift jab of the side of his hand, knocking him back. He kicked next, ducking low and aiming for the knees. The Mirialan stumbled, and chuckled, baring bloody teeth. “So you do know a thing or two.”

“Please...” Cal tried. “I'm sorry, I'm not normally...I just...forgive me, I don't want to fight...” He held up his hands, backed against the wall.

“Too bad, because I do, you little brat!” He lunged forward again, and Cal gasped, throwing up his hands to block. The fight was barely a fight at all, as after a short scuffle and several desperate evasions of that thin knife they clearly got impatient, and Cal found his arms being seized by the other two. He was pushed back against the wall and held there, and panic took over, all of his self defence knowledge as out of reach as the Force in the murky bubble of his fear.

“No...wait, don't!” He begged, struggling in their grip. The Mirialan's clenched fist came out of nowhere, catching him across the face and he felt his nose break. He gasped, sobbing in pain as blood spattered the ground. The first blow was followed by two more, and a fourth to his stomach. The thought of reaching for Master Tapal's lightsaber flickered through his mind as he was dropped to the floor, and it immediately turned his stomach. Maybe he deserved this, he thought, curling up as one of the attackers drove his boot into his chest and drew the first proper scream from him. He had been too slow on the _Brave._ He had let Master Tapal die, he had left him in a swamp with no grave to lie alone in the mud forever. And he had stolen credits from the Mirialans beating the crap out of him.

He stopped struggling, instead just throwing his arms up to protect his head as he sobbed bitterly, bleeding on the ground, only barely able to hope they didn't decide to start cutting him, too. The blows came from every angle, and he did nothing to stop them, the pain of one hit just dulling him to the one the came next.

“Alright, enough, leave the kid be!” A rasping voice thick with a Corellian accent cut through the haze of pain. “I know you cutters should be working, so get lost!”

Cal lifted his head in time to watch the three Mirialans slope off with little more than token protests as a tall Tholothian woman crouched beside him. She was old, maybe Master Tapal's age, her caf coloured skin mottled and tinged with blue. She had red tendrils sprouting from her scaled head, though they were fading to white at the bottom, and she clucked at him disapprovingly. “Come on. Get up, child. Don't cry.” She tugged him to his feet and frowned, scrutinising his face with a low chuckle. “What a sorry little scrap rat you are. Well, I hope you learned a lesson not to mess with cutters.” Cal swiped a hand across his bloody face miserably, wincing when he touched his broken nose. “Did you really pinch credits?”

“Yes...” Cal replied piteously, his voice sounding terribly thick thanks to the blood coating his tongue. “I was hungry...”

She rolled her eyes. “Then you deserved it. You need to get a job like every other mongrel on this planet. You humans are so entitled. Well, I guess you won't be doing it again in a hurry. Come on, let's fix you up, see if we can't find your face under all that blood.” She didn't leave him much choice but to follow her as she strode out into the street. Cal pulled up his hood, his arm aching at the movement as he limped behind her, feeling very sorry for himself as she took him three streets over to a ramshackle tenement hall, whisking him up a very suspect looking elevator, the cage made of black painted durasteel, and clearly welded together out of lots of smaller scrap parts. It clanked and shuddered, and it seemed to take an age to reach the sixteenth floor, where it finally screeched to a stop with a groan. The Tholothian stepped out, turning those fierce blue eyes on Cal. “...Well? Come on. We don't eat humans, let's get a move on.”

“Why...are you helping me?” Cal asked, voice quiet, cracking a little. Not that he was complaining, he felt like he had been run over by a train. He could still taste blood in his mouth, and his nose wrinkled as he licked his lips.

“...I got a kid about your age.” She shrugged carelessly. “What's your name?”

“Cal. Cal Kestis...” He replied automatically, before internally cursing with a wince. This was...probably one of those occasions when a fake name might have been more sensible, but it was too late now. Besides. He was already a thief, and a failure. He didn't want to be a liar, too.

She looked him up and down, a touch of amusement in her expression, and nodded. “Ylsa Kalla. Call me Yil.” She led him inside her little apartment, sitting him down on the galley table and clunking an ancient, battered looking first aid kit beside him. He fidgeted a little as she dug through the kit, suddenly reminded of Bunker, the 13th's medic. How many times had Cal been patched up by the friendly clone after a training accident, always with a gentle chuckle and a ruffle of his hair? Cal had thought Bunker was so cool, with his eyebrow piercing and his absolute calm under pressure. He shivered a little, a pang of loss settling in his belly. There was no way Bunker could have been part of the plot to turn on his Master. He hoped that the medic had been able to escape before the starship blew up. 

“You know, Cal, you're the right sort of build for rigger work.” Yil said conversationally a few moments later, interrupting his brief moment of grief, and Cal blinked.

“Rigger...work?” He echoed, wincing as she wiped his face efficiently with an antibacterial pad, wiping away the blood and cleaning his split lip.

“Yeah. You know. Scrapper's Guild riggers. The ones who do all the scrambling and the climbing. All the dangerous jobs. We're always looking for skinny brats like you to squeeze into tight places.” Her tone was just a tad too pointed for this to be casual. Was this the real reason she had stepped in to save him? To recruit him? That at least, was easier to trust than a mother's empathy. Cal didn't have a mother, he had no idea what might drive one to feel sympathy for another person's child. But if she wanted something from him, that made a lot more sense. His shoulders relaxed a little as she sprayed his nose and neck with cheap, diluted bacta spray before patching them with regular bandages. She gave him no warning before setting his nose with a sharp crack, and he squeaked in pain, jumping half a foot in the air. “Better to get that over with.” She smirked, and he scowled at her, eyes watering. “Does your stomach hurt?”

“A bit, but he couldn't kick as hard as he could punch...” Cal admitted. He'd taken worse knocks before – even on training mode, a lightsaber hit packed a vicious punch. He could feel the weight of his Master's saber still safe in his cloak's inner pocket. He wasn't even sure he could have beaten his attackers even if he'd drawn it. He was good with them, he always had been, but Jaro Tapal's was much heavier, dual bladed and...well. Not his. His was in thousands of tiny pieces now, exploded along with the _Brave._

“Then, since I'm not a doctor, I'm gonna leave the rest of you alone, unless you think something's broken. You're tough, boy, I'll give you that. Not may kids would get up from that and walk all this way. You'll make a decent Rigger. Go and get washed up, and I'll take you to someone who'll give you an honest job.” Yil's blue eyes were not unkind, but her tone was very firm.

“Yes ma'am. Thank you.”

“You haven't met him yet.” She snorted, shooing him into the small fresher. He stumbled to the chipped sink, leaning over it and breathing in slowly, well practised as gathering his pain and releasing it into the Force. It may be elusive right now, but this was something he had been able to do since he was a tiny youngling. Opening his eyes after a moment or two, he stared at his reflection, barely recognising the boy in the dirty mirror. Yil had indeed found his face, but it wasn't the face Cal remembered seeing in the fresher mirror on his star destroyer. His nose and lip were patched, and his neck was smothered in burn salve. He looked pale and drawn, and very young, his hair a rat's nest on his head, freckles dark against his skin. He touched his shoulder where his Padawan braid should have been with a soft sigh of regret, and wondered if he'd ever be a Jedi Padawan again. Someone would come for him, surely. Someone had to come for him.

He sighed, pushing away from the sink and availing himself of the small shower, shimmying out of his clothes in record time. The water ran slow and the pipes creaked, but it was warm, and blissful on Cal's battered body. He leaned against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment as three days of sweat and filth and blood washed off of him. Rain just didn't quite have the same effect as soap and hot water, and he felt a pulse of gratitude for Yil, however stoic and sharp she might be. Still, it would be rude to waste too much of her water, so he shut it off. Within a few minutes he was back out in the Tholothian's galley kitchen, and she nodded. “Ready?”

“Thank you. Again.” Cal mumbled.

She grinned, blue tinged skin crinkling with amusement as she pushed off the wall. “Come on. Let's give you something honest to do.” She took him back out into the street, letting him set the pace as he tested his aching legs. They were still feeling his hike from the crashed pod, and being kicked half to death hadn't helped. Now, though, he felt like he had something to prove. She thought he would be good at this Rigger job, and he definitely owed her. So he followed diligently as Yil took him back to the station. 

“This place is such a maze...” He murmured.

“Yeah, you don't seem much like a local.” Yil agreed, raising a brow. “How'd you end up here?” When Cal just shrugged, looking away, she snorted. “Alright, I guess that was nosey. Here, front centre.” She pushed him forward as they got to the train station, and she flashed her wrist at the barrier, which lifted for them both. Once they were on the platform, which was full to bursting, she got them both a can of white, vaguely nutty juice from a machine and leaned against the wall to wait for the train. Apparently, it was the end of a shift, and the platform was busy. Cal had never been amazing with cramped spaces, at least until he'd had to live on a Venator for a year, but knowing he had someone with him ostensibly looking out for him at least afforded him the chance to look around in curiosity at the myriad beings that called his scrapheap home. 

The train arrived with a screeching rumble, and, like everything else here, it looked like it had been built from bits of anything and everything. “It doesn't look much like the cargo trains.”

“Well, the Guild isn't gonna spend good credits on passenger trains, are they? Not when they gotta keep their cargo safe. Up there's where the money is.” She nodded high above them, where Cal could just about see through the gantries and pipes to the monorail. “There's hundreds of checkpoints where they do stock inventory, so nothing leaves or comes in the Guild isn't aware of.”

“That seems kinda...excessive...” And might make for a difficult escape, Cal wondered as they shuffled onto the train. There were a few ramshackle looking seats, but it was mostly standing room only, and Yil squeezed them into a corner. Cal fidgeted, feeling a little out of his depth. He was going along with her because she had helped him, but he didn't have the faintest idea where she was taking him. The Jedi in him told him he could trust her, but given how foggy the Force felt right now he wasn't even sure he could trust his instincts. Still...he was here now, and with the volume of being on the train, he definitely wasn't going anywhere.

“I guess so. I don't run the Guild, so I dunno why they take it so seriously, but...” She shrugged. “I'm not going anywhere on those trains, so I don't care.”

Cal hummed in wordless agreement. He wasn't going anywhere, either. Not until he found out what had happened up there on the _Brave_ , or the Jedi came for him. In the meantime, Yil's job she apparently had for him would keep him busy, and allow him to keep his head down in this chaotic world he'd crash landed in. He grabbed hold of the handrail by his left arm as the train pulled away from the station, agonisingly slow, and he let himself sink into the rhythmic rumble of it, letting the noise of the passengers wash over him. Slowly, gently, he reached for the Force as he felt it humming around him, a quiet buzz in each being that stood, sat or slumped in the carriage. Immediately, he felt as though he were standing on a knife edge, a deep, yawning darkness either side of him, and he jolted out of his attempt to meditate, screwing his eyes shut.

Yeah. That...that was unpleasant. He felt a little shiver of despair. What kind of Jedi was he that he couldn't even grasp the thin threads of his tattered connection to the Force and mend them? He'd done everything right. He'd survived the night in the city, found someone to help him, taken care of himself. Why did he still struggle?

“Kid. Kid?” Yil poked him in the side. “You're not gonna be sick on me, are you?”

“Huh? I...no. Sorry. Just...I just zoned out a bit there.” Cal flushed, a little mortified that she had witnessed his quiet little meltdown. He tried to smile weakly. “I'm okay.” Their journey was, luckily, quite short, just three stops, and then another endless, slow elevator ride up the levels. This time, the turbolift was outside, with nothing but rusty looking rails keeping the occupants from the edge. He leaned over, looking out at the city below him as they climbed higher. In a way, the duracrete and steel jungle was kind of beautiful, with all its colours and wires and levels. The sun was setting now, casting a dusky orange light over Choria as it drifted through the clouds. The first stars were dotting the far horizon, and Cal felt small, as he always did when he stared at the sky. Despite all his complaints about living on a Venator...he missed being up there in the stars, with his Master and the clones.

“It's not such an ugly pile of crap from up here, is it?” Yil laughed at his staring.

“I guess...”

The turbolift shuddered to a halt, and he tore his eyes from the distant stars, keeping close as his guide took him across a narrow bridge. Up here, instead of streets and shops, there were gantries and ladders and enormous poles with rough handholds shorn into them. It looked like an enormous assault course, and looking up at the chaos made him dizzy. Yil didn't head for any of the ladders, taking him along a narrow gantry studded with several doors at irregular intervals, their footsteps echoing on the durasteel platform. Cal counted eleven doors before Yil stopped, and kicked at the door with her boot twice before letting herself in, beckoning Cal to follow. Still a little helpless in her wake, he obeyed, green eyes wide as they ducked into a small office space. Two data droids manned a pair of ancient looking terminals, and a human man with a scruffy beard and tattoos on his face looked up. “Kalla. Bit late for you, isn't it?”

“It's been a slow day.” Yil grinned, dropping down into a faded but comfy looking seat in front of the desk. “You're still here, though.”

“Might as well sleep here now with all the increases in hours.” He grumbled. His voice was scratchy, and the reason why was answered when a Taw-root cigar made an appearance. Cal shifted at the open use of a drug that was banned in the Core, and the man looked up at him, immediately assessing, looking him up and down with the kind of scrutiny that suggested this kind of drop in was reasonably regular. “You brought me a new Rigger.”

“I did. Cal, this is Carrow Hjilskrif, one of lower Choria's resource managers. Carrow, this is Cal Kestis. He needs a job.”

“I'll say he does, scrawny little thing. Looks like someone's tried to take a chunk or two out of him.” Carrow snorted, and Cal couldn't help but feel a little offended. He was small, but certainly not scrawny, not with ten years of lightsaber training! The man's appraisal was clearly finished, as he stood. “Ylsa tell you what being a Rigger means, kid?”

Cal blinked. “Only that...you need people who can squeeze into tight spaces and climb stuff.”

The corner of Carrow's mouth lifted in a smirk. “Yeah, that's...pretty much it, though you also need a basic knowledge of standard machinery. You got that?”

“Yes, Mast...yes sir.” He corrected himself quickly, forcing himself not to glance over at the piercing look Yil was giving him. “I'm pretty good at fixing things.” He was. All Initiates were taught basic mechanics, and as a Padawan he had taken advanced classes. His teachers had said he was one of the best they had seen since Anakin Skywalker had breezed through the classes while barely opening a textbook. Which was...quite a claim to fame. So he would be fine. He could do this. And what he didn't know, he would learn. Some of his determination must have shown on his face, as Carrow nodded. 

“Then I guess I'll put you to work.” He dug around in his desk, and tossed Yil a small bag of coins, which she caught with a nod and a grin. “Here's your Finders Fee, Yil. Pleasure, as always.” He smirked.

“Finders fee...?” Cal echoed, tilting his head as he looked over his shoulder at the Tholothian, who responded with a toothy smile. That's why she had been so accommodating. “Ah...worth a shower and a few bandages, was I?” He let a little touch of sass slip into his voice.

“You got it, kid.” Yil winked, pocketing the credits. “You'll be fine. The pay is crap, but it's a decent enough job for a kid your age.” She poked his cheek, the slightest hint of reluctant fondness in her blue eyes. “Stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah. I will.” He promised, watching as she gave him an odd little salute, nodded to Carrow, and then was gone, vanishing out of the office. Cal watched her go, wondering if he'd ever see her again. He looked around the small office, taking in this new change to his life with a small shake of his head. Everything was happening so quickly, and all Cal could do was sit back and let it all happen, like a leaf caught in a fierce wind. Carrow cleared his throat, and he blinked at the man, feeling awkward all of a sudden.

“Well, Kestis, this'll either be the best or worst decision you've ever made, so let's get the fun part over with, shall we?” He beckoned Cal closer. “Roll your sleeve up, put your right arm wrist up, down on the desk.” The young Jedi hesitated for only a moment before doing as he was told, showing his underarm to the man and wincing at the hand shaped bruise that was blossoming on his wrist. Carrow whistled. “Someone took a disliking to you boy, didn't they?”

Cal didn't have a response, watching silently and with a hint of wary trepidation as Carrow moved his bruised arm under a white box that looked a bit like a vice. The writing on the side was in Huttese, and as Cal squinted at the unfamiliar, scrawling letters, the Scrapper pushed the sides of the box in, trapping his arm there. Cal squeaked, an embarrassing sound that made him sound like a mouse, but before he could try and struggle free, the machine beeped, and blinding pain blossomed above his wrist, sending a fierce bolt of agony up his arm, through his shoulder and down his spine as all his nerve endings exploded. He bit down on his lip hard enough to bruise it, desperate to keep any other noises down. He couldn't cry, he wasn't weak! The flash of pain lasted barely a moment, then it was replaced by a dull throbbing, a deeper pain that was almost worse than the bright flash that had preceded it.

Carrow released his arm and he snatched it back, eyes wide at the shiny black tattoo that had been instantly lasered onto his skin. Bold black shapes with a set of small squares dotted in a pattern beneath stood out proudly against the pale cream of his underarm. “...Ouch.” He complained, scowling a little.

“Oh, don't fuss. It's not that big. Gets you into a lot of places, that little scratch.” Carrow grinned, stroking his scruffy black beard. “Including a free pass on the trains. You're welcome.” Cal processed that, and poked at the mark. He instantly regretted it as pain flared up along his arm, and he bared his teeth, hissing a little.

“Yeah, don't do that.” The man snorted, tilting his head and tossing him a little packet of stim painkillers. “...Welcome to the Scrapper's Guild, Cal Kestis.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here begins the influx of original characters. (ffff so much more work than borrowing someone else's) 
> 
> I mean...let's be honest, Prauf wasn't the only guy Cal came across in five years on Bracca! Don't worry though...he's coming soon! Thanks again for all the kudos and comments, see you next chapter :)
> 
> ...Also couldn't resist the little reference to my absolute favourite terrible trash son Anakin...


	4. Scrap Rat

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

Cal must have drifted off at some point, as he was woken abruptly by the insistent beep of his personal comm. “Yeah...yeah I hear it Beedee...” He mumbled when the little droid whistled a quiet greeting. He stifled a yawn as he accepted the call, blinking blearily down at the miniature version of Cere, and lighting up when he realised it was her. “Cere. It's good to hear from you...” He yawned again.

“Did I wake you up? Sorry Cal." She grinned, looking typically not sorry. Cal had missed her, a lot. "Are you alright?” She asked.

“Yeah. I'm holed up in a cantina in the middle of nowhere. Gonna skip the planet tomorrow and keep moving.” Cal rolled his shoulders, wincing when they both cracked. He had been restless, clearly, his muscles aching despite the sleep he'd managed. 

“Good. We're still on the move, but I thought I'd risk a long-range call. We aren't being tracked as far as I can tell, but I think the Imps are far more focussed on you. There's a lot of chatter when I can crack the codes and listen in...I think you managed to ruffle more than a few feathers when you stole back that holocron.”

“You were there too...” Cal grumbled.

“Oh, I'm far less interesting to Vader than you are. It was you he fought, and you that stopped me drawing on the Dark Side. You must have felt how angry that made him.” She sounded as gently proud of him as ever, and he took a moment to appreciate her fierce affection for him.

“Uh...I wasn't really focussing on him, at that point.” Cal blushed. He hadn't really been thinking at all beyond the pain of the injury in his chest, and the terror of seeing his friend Falling, her rage and hatred bright and burning in the Force. Darth Vader, as he now knew the Dark, metal mountain of a man was called, had been secondary to his desperation to pull Cere home.

Even in blue miniature, Cal could see Cere's face soften fondly. “No. You were focussing on me.” She acknowledged. “Which is what makes you one of the best Jedi I've ever known.” Cal felt warmth blossoming in his chest – which probably matched the warmth on his face as he blushed. He was saved from having to answer by Cere's knowing laugh. “Alright. I'd better go. I'll contact you again as soon as I can.”

Once he'd said a quiet farewell, she was gone, and Beedee let out a shrill whistle. “...Yeah, you're right, buddy. It is good to have friends.” Cal agreed, voice quiet as he lay back down on the narrow bunk. Another sharp beep, and he chuckled. “Yes, Beedee One, you're definitely my best friend.” He promised, scuffing the droid's head fondly. Friends had been in terribly short supply until recently, he thought to himself. 

**\- Bracca, 19BBY -**

This was all terribly claustrophobic, Cal thought as he fidgeted in his narrow bunk. There were a dozen other boys in here with him, all of varying ages, the oldest maybe seventeen or so, the youngest, small and scrawny, perhaps nine or ten. It was like the creche back at the Temple, in a strange way, but also nothing like it at the same time. Rigger boys, all of them, and a roomful of girls across the narrow hall, all Scrappers, all much more experienced than him, and all of them with nowhere else to go, just like him. He felt disconnected from them already – they all knew one another, and they spoke a lot of Huttese mixed with Basic, a strange kind of pseudo language Cal struggled to comprehend. Not that he had helped his cause, keeping himself to himself in a kind of bewildered haze since he'd been dropped off here a few hours ago by Carrow, with nothing but a borrowed, musty uniform and a vague sense of confusion.

His bunk was second to bottom in a stack of five, a steel ladder bolted to the wall granting access to the higher beds. It was only a few feet wide, and not particularly comfortable – but admittedly it was better than his warehouse full of boxes. And yet, he couldn't sleep. He could sense every being in the room – he could hear them, smell them, and even, when he concentrated, feel their quiet energy in the Force. He kept his hands in fists, nails cutting into his palms after an unfortunate incident with the borrowed blanket where he'd accidentally sensed echoes of its previous owner. He'd had to try and explain his startled reel of surprise to a roomful of curious boys, stammering and stuttering until they'd lost interest. He was fairly sure they already thought he was a freak, which considering his sudden complete inability to control his psychometry wasn't exactly far from the truth. He sighed as he rolled over again, facing the wall. Like most everything else, it was made of metal, the blue paint peeling. Idly, he scratched a few flakes of paint off, curled under the borrowed blanket.

Wait for the Council's signal.

What signal? He kept thinking about it, it had been several days now, and it wasn't like the Jedi didn't know where Jaro Tapal and his Padawan had been stationed. What if they thought that he and his Master had died? Would they ever come looking? Or maybe...the signal he was looking for was something more general? How would he know? He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, feeling a headache coming on and trying to will the tears away that had begun to sting the corners of them. His freshly tattooed arm hurt, his nose still hurt, his legs ached and everywhere he had been hit was bruised. All in all he was feeling thoroughly sorry for himself. Yil had been nice to him, but now he was alone again despite all the beings sharing this tiny room.

Sleep continued to evade him, anxiety and residual pain keeping him awake. He had no idea what waited for him in the morning – work, presumably, Carrow had told him that someone would show him where he needed to go, but who that was, or what his work might entail...he had no clue. So far, Bracca had been a frightening mess of rain, mud and steel, and truth be told he wasn't expecting it to improve much. But...he had work. He would have an income, though it wasn't going to be much of anything useful. He wouldn't have to steal again, and he could stay hidden and hold the line, wait, like Master Tapal had told him.

He must have slept in the end, though he knew immediately that it hadn't been restful. He was woken by a sharp, high pitched alarm, his head still fuzzy, the bone-weariness he was beginning to get used to still holding him down and making his limbs feel like dead weights. He groaned, sitting up, and he only just caught himself in time to stop his head colliding with the bunk above. Another head injury was not going to help him, he thought, glaring balefully at the metal base of the bed. Following the other boys seemed like a good idea, and he observed them as they dressed and rough-housed, pushing and shoving and teasing. He heard a good number of Basic and Huttese swear words sprinkled amidst the chatter, but he kept quiet for his part, not particularly keen to engage anyone. There was no sign of Carrow as the boys started to file out of the room, and he panicked a little, not knowing where he was supposed to be going. For just a moment he let his fingers brush the hidden hilt of his Master's lightsaber, still squirrelled away under his clothes, and he drew a few seconds of comfort from it. 

The punch to his shoulder landed right on a bruise, and he winced. “Hey.” One of the older human boys eyed him with a distinctly disinterested gaze. “New kid. Boss says you're shadowing me today, got it? You'll be doing what I tell you.” Finally, some Basic that wasn't coloured with so much Huttese he couldn't understand it!

“Uh...” Cal blinked. “Y...yeah, okay. I'm Cal...” He murmured, fidgeting a little.

“Sure. My name's Reece. I'm in charge of this dorm, so don't piss me off and we'll get on fine. Someone's beaten you right up already, so I guess you already know this place is a complete shithole and you're gonna hate it.” Reece grinned, his teeth very white against his dark skin. “It's shit work, and shit pay, but on this heap it's probably the best you're gonna get until you get too big or too old for it, so make the most of it. Let's go.”

Cal was just grateful to have someone to follow, despite the boy's less than encouraging description of the job he was about to start. Jedi were meant to be independent and resourceful, but he was feeling very un-Jedi like right now, and being able to dog Reece's steps meant he didn't have to think too hard and make any decisions for himself. In the last few days he'd made some truly awful decisions on his own, so letting Yil and Carrow and Reece push him along didn't seem like a bad plan in the grand scheme of things.

They went...up. A long way up, climbing and taking lifts and scrambling up poles, using some aged but sturdy climbing gear to ascend to the top of the city, which yawned below, sprawling beneath him like a great durasteel monster. Reece showed him how to use the climbing kit with practiced fingers, clipping cables into the steel loops on his uniform to give him a bit of a safety line. Which was comforting, considering how high up they were. 

Once they were in yet another lift and the threat of a fall was lessened slightly, Cal was able to look around. This high, great steel barges wound their way between the buildings, each manned by some kind of foreman droid. He had to reel back to avoid the exhaust vent of one as it passed very close to the screeching turbolift. He'd seen similar vessels in Coruscant and had always thought they looked very odd, like they shouldn't be able to hover at all. Workers in various uniforms were dotted everywhere, and he watched with wide eyes as an enormous chunk of a Munificent-class Separatist destroyer was lowered by two pilot ships with enormous cables onto a vast but very unstable looking steel platform. It was immediately swarmed by workers, their orange and blue uniforms bright spots amidst the grey ship and the even greyer drizzle. “...Wow.” He murmured, leaning forward to look through the bars of the lift. The ever present rain was driving down on his back, but he barely noticed it this time as he saw a whole new level of Choria, industrial and vast, and yet still clinging to the mountain like a great iron spider.

“That's nothing. We've broken up Venators, Lucrehulks, Dreadnoughts...all sorts of heavy cruisers.” Reece told him. “That one's fresh from the ship cutter. See there, the magnetic laser? That's the ship cutter.” He nodded towards a surprisingly small, oddly shaped craft that was little more than a mount for an enormous orange laser that was currently sawing through a wing of a hulking Corellian heavy freighter with an awful shrieking that sounded to Cal like some sort of enormous animal. “Breaks stuff down into more manageable chunks for us scrap rats to pick at. Glamorous, huh?” Reece smirked.

“Yeah.” Cal tried to push down the memories the word 'Venator' had brought to the fore. “So...what do we do?”

“Basically we rip them apart. You'll get used to knowing what's valuable and what's not. Until you know what you're doing, you'll probably just be scavenging for scraps, and running for the others, but you're skinny, so they might draft you in and get you on some bigger ships quickly, depends how good you are with a mech kit.” Reece shrugged. “Just do whatever the foreman droid tells you until your shift ends, then you can go eat.”

The lift shuddered to a halt, and then, and they stepped out onto a platform overlooking a great vista of half broken up ships, a mess of cables and barges and smaller transports zooming between the work sites. It was huge, and Cal stared out at the chaos, eyes wide. Reece smirked. “This is the Shipbreaking Yard. You'll probably spend most of your time up here, as a rigger.” Cal barely had time to contemplate the vastness of the yard, as the next few hours were a chaotic mess of wires and steel and straining his thirteen year old knowledge of mechanics. Reece had clearly been told to test him, and Cal was quick to do whatever he was told. It was strange work for a Jedi, and tough, and he was glad for the gloves the older boy had shoved into his hands as he pulled off yet another durasteel panel off the underside of a small patchwork cruiser to get at the complex wiring within. He was looking, apparently, for the hyperdrive, a valuable piece of tech that, even if it wasn't functional, could be stripped for parts. Reece didn't seem to be doing much himself, watching Cal work as he burrowed into the ancient cruiser, lying sprawled underneath it and tearing bits of it apart. He'd done similar work before in classes, but never really during his short apprenticeship, but surprisingly, the work wasn't dull. He'd always been quite fond of taking things apart, and this was no different.

With a crow of triumph, he yanked out a fistful of wires to reveal the smooth plane of the hyperdrive above. It would take more than his simple kit to extract it, they weren't exactly small, but Reece hadn't told him to take it out, just to find it, and see if it was working. He leaned back on his heels, excited nonetheless. “It's still intact. I reckon it's a class five at best, though.”

The older boy nodded, reluctantly impressed. “You know more than I thought you would.” He tilted his head curiously. “Where did you say you were from?”

“I...didn't.” Cal mumbled, immediately uncomfortable at being put on the spot. “I don't wanna talk about it.”

“Suit yourself.” The other boy shrugged, clearly not curious enough to press. In a way, Cal was grateful that a distinct inability to care seemed to be the norm here on Bracca. It kept unwanted questions at a minimum, at least. “Well, I guess you know what you're doing. I got a quota to hit though, so training time is over. You'd best keep up. Watch everything I'm doing, you won't be following me around for long, Carrow'll expect you to be working for yourself within a week. Don't get used to the mechanical stuff mind, you're a proper baby so you won't be doing anything too complicated just yet.” Cal jumped to his feet with a nod, a little relieved. He might know his way around a ship, but that didn't mean he wanted to test his limited knowledge too much. He spent the rest of the day fetching and carrying and essentially being a runner for Reece and another young man who was apparently his work partner. It wasn't exactly fun or exciting, but he had instructions, and the part of himself that was still a Jedi Padawan knew how to follow instructions. 

Yil hadn't been lying about the kind of work he'd be doing, either, if this first day was any indication. He had squeezed through the narrowest little spaces in order to move from platform to platform, encountered some very large rats and almost had a heart attack at their sudden proximity to his face, scrambled up walls in search of various tools for Reece, and in one particular little mission he'd had to cross a very narrow piece of pipe to lower a proper bridge for the two bigger boys to cross the gap behind him. He had even shown off a little, years of weapons training giving him excellent balance, and granting him the courage to practically run across the pipe, almost enjoying the exhilarating feel of the vast space below him and the air either side of him, his arms stretched wide, his footing sure despite the rain.

By the end of the day, though, he was absolutely bone-tired, and starving. He trailed after Reece towards the canteen, struggling to contain his exhausted yawns. His whole body was soaked through from the incessant rain, though he had long since stopped shivering. His fingers were numb from all the scrambling, and he was definitely feeling his lack of sleep. He had no real idea of how many hours he'd been on the go, chronometers were in short supply up in the Shipbreaking yard. All he knew was that it was already dark, and it was still raining.

“Still with me there, Red?” Reece called, and Cal's nose wrinkled as he pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes. 

“My name is Cal.” He grumbled tiredly.

“Sure is, Red.” The older boy teased, tugging on a damp strand of his copper hair. “Come get some scran.”

“...Scran?” Cal echoed, blinking in confusion.

“Food. Kriff, kid, where were you born, Coruscant?” Reece sniggered, guiding him into a long, narrow room full of young workers, over to a low bench and sitting him down. “I'll get yours. Don't think you'll make it there and back.” He snorted, and Cal just watched through tired eyes as he fetched the younger boy a bowl of what looked like a thin, unappetising stew. “Don't ask what's in it.” Reese advised, sitting opposite and scooping the stew into his mouth with a thin piece of tough looking sourbread. 

Cal looked around at the pack of skinny, underfed youngsters, illuminated under the bright, cheap fluorescent lights that hung unevenly above them. Water was dripping from a pipe in the corner, and the walls were covered in peeling paint and mould. There was a large window at one end, through which a kitchen droid served up the meal to the trailing line of waiting workers. It was a dump of a place, and Cal sighed, reminding himself to never take the galley kitchens and rowdy mess halls on the Venators for granted ever again. Thinking about his life on the ship made his stomach clench painfully, and he quickly scooped food into his mouth to try and cover the wince. He immediately pulled a face, much to the cackling delight of his table mates. It was awful, thin and reedy and tough, with no obvious flavour. 

Cal decided that night as he fidgeted in his tiny bunk, that he hated Bracca.

That first week, one drizzly, grey day blended into another as he slowly got used to the work he'd been sort of...press ganged into. It was all much of the same, rain and steel, broken ships and awful stews and a thin mattress, definitely not enough to keep his traumatised mind occupied. That invariably led it to thoughts of his escape from the _Brave_ and the subsequent death of his Master, something he was trying very hard to _not_ do. He didn't see much of Reece after the first couple of days, the foreman droid soon finding more important things for him to do, tasking him with all sorts of fetching and carrying jobs. It was mindless, and hard, and he was rewarded with little more than one meal a day and an uncomfortable bed in a crowded dorm room. The brief excitement of finding something to do faded with the monotony of being little more than an errand boy for the older Riggers, scrambling like a scrap rat across the ships and the platforms of the yard as he learned his way around. By the end of the fourth day he had resigned himself to this strange new life for the time being. At least he was good at this running around business, the climbing and scrambling and wriggling keeping his body fit even if it didn't keep his mind from wandering.

All in all, Cal thought as he stood in the rain on the edge of a soaking metal platform helping a small team of cutters secure a Vaskian heavy transport ready for slicing, he was wet, hungry, cold and tired, and he wanted to go home. He still hadn't seen any hint of a pay check, and he didn't think he would know what one looked like or what to do with it if he did. Jedi weren't paid, after all. He was becoming increasingly worried that he was nothing more than an indentured servant, like the men and women who worked the mines on Kessel. He was so preoccupied with his misery that he missed the enormous steel hook he was supposed to be catching and attaching to the barge beside him. He swore, and leapt for it, losing his balance as he caught it and swinging wildly out over the barge with a squeak, dangling from the thick chain. He let out another alarmed cry as the barge disappeared and the huge chain swung out, threatening to throw him down two hundred storeys into the darkness below. The centre of the shipbreaking yard had nothing but the mouth of the mountain below it. Choria, he had discovered, was actually sitting on a long dead volcano, and this side of the yard had nothing but a gaping hole, and something horrific living inside it that the workers called an Ibdis Maw.

Which sounded like something he definitely didn't want anywhere near him.

None of this knowledge helped with his immediate predicament, and none of the cutters seemed to have noticed his wild swing and subsequent struggle with the hook. His wet fingers slipped, and he let out another shout, eyes wide as he scrabbled to hold on, the Force ever elusive even in the face of this kind of deadly danger. Panic took over as the rain stung his eyes and his fingers slipped, and he whimpered.

“Hey! Watch yourself, kid!” A loud voice called, and someone grabbed his foot, pulling him back over the barge. An enormous grey arm grabbed him around the waist and plucked him off the hook, and the other hand released Cal's foot to grab the offending chain and attach it to the barge. Cal hung limply in the stranger's arms as he caught his breath, the terror of dangling hundreds of feet above a carnivorous creature the size of a star destroyer still very much at the forefront of his mind. He drew in deep, heaving breaths, clinging to the unknown engineer's arm for dear life. Finally, he tilted his head back and looked up into the black, beady eyes of a middle aged Abednedo, a friendly smile on his face. “You gave me a fright, there!” He laughed, voice scratchy and worn, but gentle as he set Cal back on his feet. “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah...Yeah.” Cal drew in a long breath. “Thanks...er...”

“Prauf. The name's Prauf.” The Abednedo grinned. “I'm an engineer with the Oh Six Eight team.” He stuck out his hand, and Cal took it, still a little shellshocked, heart still pounding.

“I'm Cal. I'm a Runner...”

“Oof. Tough break, kid, that's a hard job. What're you doing up here with the cutters? They running so short on help that they're getting Rigger kids involved now?” Prauf looked him up and down, and Cal figured he looked pretty pathetic in his oversized, second hand uniform, and he blushed. 

“Dunno...I was just told to come up here and help...” Cal admitted. “I only just started, so I'm really just learning where everything is.” He grimaced, looking over the edge of the barge. “And apparently leaping like an idiot off the edge of very high platforms overlooking horrifying, man-eating creatures.”

Prauf snorted, the long tendrils of his upper lip twitching in amusement. He looked over at the trio of cutters, who were arguing in Huttese, apparently over where to slice the wing they were all standing on. “Hey guys? I'm gonna borrow the kid for a bit.” He announced, not waiting for a response before he took Cal's arm and steered him away from the edge of the barge. Cal looked helplessly over his shoulder, but no-one stopped them as Prauf walked him along the platform. They hopped down a level out of sight of the barges, leaving the sound of the ship cutter behind them. The quiet was wonderful after a morning listening to the horrific screeching.

“Come and sit. I'm on a break.” Prauf offered. He patted the ground beside him, and, nonplussed, Cal sat down where he patted, dangling his legs over the edge of the platform and staring out over the yard. The engineer eyed him. “Figured after a scare like that you needed a minute or two. I know they don't treat you kids very well, right?” He chirped sympathetically, still jarringly friendly compared to everyone else Cal had met. He said nothing, words sticking like glue in his mouth as he blinked up at him, a little dazed. The Abednedo chuckled and lightly scuffed his hair. “You look like you could use a nap, and a good meal or three. Here.” He dug a hand into the sling bag at his hip, and handed over a small cake of tightly packed, faintly green coloured rice, and Cal's mouth watered. 

“Are you...sure? I can have this...?” He asked, voice small.

“Of course, kid. I don't really need two, look at me!” Prauf grinned, beady eyes friendly as he patted his belly. Cal, in response, practically inhaled the cake, the flavour of the meat inside spicy and warm, and an absolute delight after the slop they had been served in the canteen over the last week.

“Thank you...that was really good.” He murmured as he finished it, blushing faintly. Embarrassingly, Cal thought he might cry in the face of this gentle kindness. It must have shown on his face, as Prauf dropped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“Made them myself. Nothing beats a bit of good food after a wet morning up in the rafters.” He patted Cal's back, and when Cal once again had no response, still bewildered at Prauf's friendliness, he continued. “Tough week?” He asked quietly. “Yeah. This soggy rock can be like that if you're not used to it. I think it's the rain, it's a real drag day after day.” He offered, a conspiratorial note in his voice as Cal smiled weakly up at him, shoulders finally relaxing a little. 

“Yeah...I don't think I'll ever be dry again.” He admitted, warmth curling in his chest as Prauf nodded along to his quiet reply, his face still kind, his hand still gentle on Cal's shoulder. “Thanks. For...talking to me. Most people here are kinda...busy.”

“Eh, this place makes everyone crazy. Even us engineers get a bit cracked in a scrapheap like this, but the money can be good, even when you gotta report to the Guild.”

Cal nodded, staring out across the yard. “I...just needed a job. I came here by myself, but I'm kinda new at _being_ by myself...” He admitted, voice quiet.

Prauf nodded. “I get that. You know...you don't have to just be a Runner. Kid like you, you could do stuff, you know? Learn stuff. You're young enough. But I guess...here, you gotta have someone to help you out.” He eyed Cal thoughtfully. “Maybe I'll talk to the bosses. See if I can't get you a better deal. Maybe you could come work with me, I could use a pair of human hands every once in a while. Yeah. Maybe I'll do that.” Prauf nodded. “Then you get a few more breaks and few less death defying leaps over the top of the volcano, and I get someone to talk to who isn't already a total whack job.”

“I...really?” Cal brightened a little, already helplessly fond of the chatty Abednedo. Prauf seemed genuine, and gentle, and Cal desperately needed a bit of both. He wasn't anything like Master Tapal, or any of the adults in the Temple he had grown up with, but...Cal didn't think he needed that. What he really needed in the face of all this fear and guilt and uncertainty was a _friend_. Someone who would be on his side, a friendly voice to talk to and a friendly face amidst Bracca's rain and chaos.

Prauf seemed like he'd be a really, really good friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, tough chapter. This felt a bit clunky, and I rewrote parts of it several times. The pacing still feels a bit...off, but I wanted to get this out and not leave anyone waiting too long! I may still tweak it a little, but this was always gonna be a weird transitional chapter. The next few should be more fun to write and a bit less weirdly paced!
> 
> Also...I've had some ideas for extending the short story that is ongoing at the beginnings of all these chapters, so fingers crossed for a prequel to that, I guess? I love writing thirteen year old Cal because he is an adorable displaced baby, but writing the little Algara snippets makes me want to write more present day!Cal...


	5. Empire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! This chapter went a completely different direction than the plan indicated so I had to work in what I needed! Hope y'all enjoy :)  
> No beta. Living my best dangerous life.

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

Cal's dreams were disjointed and dark, filled with blood and screaming and the flash of blaster bolts. A golden saber flashed, meeting red in a shower of sparks as he was thrown backwards by a black-clad monster. Someone called his name, desperate and high, and he tumbled backwards, half drowning in a shower of warm rain as the stone face of a Zeffo sage stared sightlessly down at him, huge and ancient. 

The Force whispered to him, soft and silky, that someone was close by. Too close. In his room, beside his bed. The dreams dissipated around him. He woke with a start, gasping and sitting bolt upright as Beedee chittered in alarm. The startled face of the barmaid – Sheera, he remembered blearily – blinked down at him, still several steps away, her hand outstretched. “I didn't even touch you and you knew I was here. You are one of them, aren't you? The one they're all looking for. A witch.” She nodded at his hip, where his saberstaff was clipped to his belt even as he slept, easy to access.

His hand dropped to the hilt as he sat up warily, reaching out a subtle tendril of the Force to try and gauge her intentions.

“Peace, Jedi.” The older woman murmured. “I'm gonna get you out of here. There are two dozen Imperial soldiers searching the streets out there, and I'm guessing you're just the scrap rat they're looking for.”

“Why would you help me?” Cal swung himself out of bed as Beedee whistled and jumped onto his shoulders. Yanking on his poncho and silently sending a prayer of thanks to the Force that it was reasonably dry, he grabbed his pack.

She shrugged. “I'm no friend to the Empire. We're a pretty insular planet, but even Algara's economy tanked after they started taking control of intergalactic trade. And...you know. You just seem like a nice kid.” She grabbed his arm and led him out the back of the cantina, nodding to the port he had seen earlier in the evening, visible a mile or so away. “Get your butt off planet. There's a pilot there, human like you. Name of Nate Merrick. You tell him Sheera sent you.” The Pantoran said, her voice hushed. “As soon as he knows there's Imps around, he'll wanna beat it, too.” At Cal's curious look, Sheera smirked. “He's a spice runner. He's a devil, but he'll get you somewhere that isn't here.”

Cal nodded. “...Thanks. I...dunno how to repay you.”

“Just keep giving them hell, yeah? That pretty face of yours has been on all the holos, I'm gonna bet you're right at the top of the Empire's shit list.” She clapped him on the shoulder, then gave him a little push. “Go on. Beat it.”

“Yes ma'am.” He grinned, saluting her. Beedee chirped a farewell, and then they were off, running out into the darkness. It was warming to know he had allies, even somewhere as remote as this.

**\- Bracca, 19BBY -**

Finding a friend like Prauf was proving to be a real stroke of luck. For the first time in days, Cal didn't feel quite so alone. The Abednedo had been as good as his word, securing Cal better jobs, and for the first few days they spent an awful lot of time together as Cal got his bearings in the Shipbreaking yard. Prauf brought his own lunch into work every day, and always shared it with Cal - there was a gentle kindness in his manner than reminded the young Padawan of some of the Jedi Masters back home. He was patient and free with his praise when Cal did a good job, and he was very good at his work, happy to show Cal what he was doing whether he was taking apart, fixing up or exploring hulking voids of broken ships hunting for valuable parts. He was a Scrapper, but he had trained as an engineer in Corellia, and he had a wealth of knowledge that he shared with his new little protege.

He was also very open with Cal, happy to chatter about himself without expecting anything in return. Cal missed his friends on Coruscant, and the clones he had grown so close to, but all things considered, he thought as he settled into his cramped little bunk for the night, he was lucky. He was full of a hot stew that Prauf had brought in for him to heat up in the canteen's little self service space, and he had a new friend who seemed to be quite willing to treat him like a little brother. The peeling paint and the mouldy smell of the dorm room didn't seem nearly so bad now. Having a friend would make his wait for the other Jedi a little easier, definitely. He rolled over so his back was to the wall, and drifted off much more easily than when he had first come here.

The next morning was an early start, and a race up to the yard to meet Prauf, with only a few minutes for a sonic shower and a ration bar. The job today would be long, but he was anticipating it to be fun – Prauf was taking him right into the belly of the biggest freighter Cal had ever seen. It had arrived on Bracca last night, having been put out of commission by its owner, some mining corporation from the mid rim. He was just in time to catch the turbolift, hanging on for dear life as he was whisked up to the very top of the yard, squashed in with two dozen other early workers. Miraculously, it wasn't raining, and Cal let himself enjoy the sunrise, dawn casting a pinkish hue over the sprawling rooftops of Choria. He pulled the strap of his too-big uniform up over his shoulder as the lift shuddered to a halt, and Prauf waved him over from one of the barges.

He hurried over, grinning up at the Abednedo, who fluffed his hair fondly in welcome. “You're early! This should be a good score today, kiddo, these old supertankers have got some pretty neat gear in their reactors!” He promised, helping Cal up onto the barge. The driver droid took off immediately – Cal was getting used to the shudder and whine of the barge as it took them over to the hulking beast of a freighter, already cut in half. “...Its huge...”

“Yeah, I think she was used to carry those monster drills from system to system. You know, the planet-coring ones?”

“No kidding...”

“Whoa!” Prauf had to duck to avoid the great durasteel monorail that carried goods across Bracca as they flew under it. “Jeez, do you mind, you great clanker? I'm a big guy, you nearly took my head off!” He scolded the droid. Cal jumped a little, reminded of the clone term for the battle droids they encountered. He quickly shook the unwanted memory away as the droid bickered with the engineer, landing them on the huge tanker, right over the yawning gap sliced into her hull by the ship cutter. Peering over the edge, Cal whistled, used to being ridiculously high by now, but never quite getting over the vastness. “Don't fall on me, kid, I haven't tied us down yet!” Prauf joked, unloading their gear. They would rappel down into the ship from here, the barges too wide and clunky to safely get inside the reactor shell. Cal knotted his steel rope into place at his belt, fingers well used to the correct knot by now as Prauf watched carefully, ensuring he had done it right.

The Abednedo tugged on his rope, nodding to himself before driving their camming spikes into the hull of the ship, his shoulders straining. Cal would never have the strength to drive the spikes into sheet steel, but he did know how to secure their lines to them, which he did quickly. “Good job, kid. Shall we?”

Cal grinned, and backed up to the edge, gloved hand tight on the rope as his bare hand reached for his tools. This was his favourite part of a rappel, he thought as he tumbled back over the edge. His stomach swooped as the world suddenly dropped away from him. His hand tightened on the rope, and then he was in the air, swinging over the dead reactor with the wind in his hair and nothing but a steel rope between him and the great hole beneath him. It was exhilarating, and he knew he was n complete control. Unlike the first time he'd done this, where the shock of being suspended in mid air had convinced him to try and reach for the safety of the Force.

He'd immediately thrown up, and Prauf had hauled him upright and let him take a break.

Eight abseils and a few weeks later he considered himself a veteran, much to Prauf's amusement. The Abednedo soon joined him, and they abseiled down into the void of the reactor core, dropping a few hundred feet before catching hold of the rusted rails of the narrow maintenance corridors. With a freighter of this size, it was quicker to cut her up and get at her insides like this, without the need to walk miles through a maze of corridors. 

The cutters had done well, they were only a few yards from the main reactor, and Cal squeezed through the tunnels while Prauf scrambled up and over on a gantry a few feet above him, too big to wriggle through Cal's chosen entry point. “Oof, it's a really old fusion reactor. Watch your hands, she's leaking fuel all over the place!”

“I thought she was empty?”

“It's mostly just deposits, I think. Look at the crystals forming...no wonder she tanked, they weren't cleaning her up much...” Something clanked loudly above him where Prauf was presumably opening up the fuel lines, and the sharp smell of unfamiliar fuel hit Cal's nose. He grimaced. “What is this stuff?”

“Not a clue. Some locally procured rubbish from one of their mining worlds, I suppose. It's low grade stuff, might even be a home brew, cobbled together from the rubbish their mines left behind. Don't let it touch you...”

“Smelling like that, you don't need to tell me twice.” Cal muttered, pulling a face as he watched unfamiliar bright blue fuel drip slowly past him, crystallising inside the pipework. “So what are we looking for?”

“Well, this is a fusion reactor, so most of her core components should be good to reuse...provided they aren't all coated in this shit.” He could hear Prauf scraping at the crystallised fuel deposits with his pickaxe, and he wriggled through the maintenance tunnel to where the reactor sat, huge and still sparking faintly. The room housing it was large and very high, though not as cavernous as the reactor rooms on the Venators. It made sense, he thought as he admired the design. She was a freighter, the space was needed for cargo. She was quite a pretty ship, despite all the rust and the garbage fuel her previous owners had been feeding her.

“It's enormous...” He murmured, fishing in his pack for his drill and quickly pulling out the screws from the plating housing the internal control panel. It was quicker than getting a droid to activate access codes – and since the ship was dead, much more likely to succeed.

“What did you expect?” Prauf called, amusement in his tone as he loosened the bolts on the sheet metal walls so he could get down and join Cal inside the reactor. “She's a big ship. Can you do a quick check, make sure this thing is totally powered down and there's no backup generator that's gonna suddenly light up and zap me? Lost a buddy last year to a damn gennie, set off the whole reactor and almost blew up half the shipyard.”

“Yikes. Please don't blow us up...” Cal returned, voice dry as he climbed up a little higher to where the control panel for the reactor lay dormant. Dead, actually, there wasn't a light to be seen, the sparks he'd seen earlier must have been residual from the work of the ship cutter. “Nope.” He confirmed. “Definitely dead.” He promised. “This thing isn't going anywhere.” That was both good and bad. Good because they wouldn't accidentally electrocute themselves, but bad because scavenged parts of a dead ship were worth much less.

Once Prauf jumped down to join him they stopped talking, their focus on the parts they were there to extract. Cal's slender fingers were good for the fiddly stuff, and he liked to think they made a pretty good team. When he was working like this, right beside a friend he could trust, mind and hands occupied, he could forget about the terror and fear of his arrival here. Deep inside the ship he had no concept of time, and the sun rose and reached its zenith without the young Padawan even realising. 

Prauf stopped them for lunch, and they climbed back up out of the generator to eat, sitting on the edge of the cut up ship. “Can't fault the view today.” Prauf commented as they ate – simple food again, but good, sour bread with a thick soup. Cal looked up at the landscape. They were so high, he could see for miles, the sprawling edges of Choria giving way to rocky, barren mountains. He was glad the swamp was behind them. He didn't want to start looking for where he'd buried his Master. The mountains weren't high, but they were striking, clouds circling their faraway peaks. 

“Yeah. It's pretty good.” He agreed quietly. Bracca was far from beautiful in comparison to some of the planets Cal had seen during his apprenticeship, but there was something wild about it when you looked beyond the city. He squinted into the distance, following the steel line of the monorail. “Is that another city...?” He asked, sure he could see man made spires and towers.

“Yeah. That's Chropolis.” Prauf confirmed. “Big spaceport there, it's not the capital, but it's bigger than this place. Choria is better for cantinas and restaurants, though. We get better food here!”

“We do?” Cal snorted.

“Well, yeah. If you live outside the Guild digs. You know...if you wanted, I got a spare bunk at my place. It'd be nicer than your dorm, and you could come out with us in the evenings, you know? You're a young kid, you gotta want to have a bit of fun.”

“Is that allowed...?” Cal hadn't considered living anywhere other than the dormitories. But then...he supposed there must be proper housing – he'd been in Yil's apartment, and most of the workers arrived by train every morning. He supposed there was a reason he had very little knowledge of how normal people lived day to day. Life as a Jedi was very different.

“The Guild don't care where you sleep kid, so long as you turn up to work. The dorms are just for the guys who don't have anywhere to go. But you know, if you passed us a little bit of rent when you could, you could stay with us.”

Cal smiled a little, feeling warm. Prauf was so kind, and what did he have to lose? They finished their lunch, spent another few standard hours collecting pieces of the old reactor, then Prauf accompanied him to the dorms, where he picked up his little bag of belongings. Mostly his work gear, and a few little useless trinkets he had picked up whilst scavenging. His Padawan robes were still in the warehouse, long forgotten, and all he had left from the _Brave_ was his Master's broken lightsaber and a single bead from his Padawan braid – the first one Jaro Tapal had given him.

He cast a quick look around the empty dorm. He wouldn't miss it, and none of the boys would miss him, either, so he barely glanced back as he followed Prauf out of the Guild quarters and down the turbolift into the city proper. He had only been a little scrap rat for a short time, but it had definitely been long enough. He was ready to feel like a person again. Prauf's decision to really and truly take Cal under his wing was very welcome, Cal thought as he padded along beside his new friend. He had struggled on his own, and whilst he understood that he was supposed to be keeping his head down and waiting for rescue, it was definitely nice to feel like someone cared about him. Bracca had proved itself exactly as forbidding and apathetic as all the reports he had read up on the _Brave_ had said, but Prauf was like a warm little light at the core of something frightening and dark. Maybe it was dangerous to cling to the first light he had seen since the crash, but Cal couldn't find it in himself to be suspicious anymore. His master had told him to trust no-one and nothing but the Force, but with the Force out of reach...he was going to cling to this kindness.

The trains through the lower levels were predictably heaving with people, so Prauf stopped them for dinner, promising that this way they could avoid the busiest trains. He was apparently keen to prove that life could be much more fun outside of Guild control as he steered them inside a small cantina that he swore blind 'did the best _mossatakka_ on Bracca'. Cal had no idea what _mossatakka_ was supposed to be, but so far, Prauf's idea of good food had been thoroughly reliable, so he wasn't about to question the Abednedo's choices. 

The cantina was loud and rowdy, and Cal stuck close to his friend, a little overwhelmed by the sudden press of other beings. Outside of his dorm mates, a few Scrappers, and some of Prauf's acquaintance, he hadn't encountered people in any great volume since he had gotten stranded here, and the noise and chaos was a little intimidating. Prauf seemed to sense his unease and dropped a hand on his shoulder, guiding him over to a quiet corner with a view of the door, and the bar. “I know it's a bit busy. But it's better than trying the trains!” He promised. “We'll head home as soon as we've eaten, and you can meet my housemate.” Cal sank into a seat with a nod, and smiled warily at the two patrons already sat down across from him, a Rodian and a human, both of whom nodded briefly, but quickly returned to their conversation. Cal couldn't help but listen in as Prauf went to fetch drinks and order their food.

“I don't know what this is gonna mean for the Guild, especially after all that double dealing mess with the Seppies. I said to Araxis that that would come back and bite them!” The human was saying in a low, heavily accented voice.

“Do you think this...Empire will want to be any more involved than the Republic was?” His companion replied, equally quiet, his Basic a little broken with Rodian but understandable.

“I dunno. But look at all the big changes in the Core.”

“Ah, the Core doesn't care about Bracca!”

“We'll see, I guess. Some of the high-ups think this has been coming for some time...”

Prauf returned then, startling Cal and cutting the conversation short. The Abednedo pressed a tall thin glass of something milky and purple into Cal's hands, and the boy blinked. “What's this?” He asked, though his thoughts were running wild. An...Empire? What Empire? The Republic wasn't an Empire. Cal wasn't the best at politics, but he knew what a democracy was and was not, and the group of Scrappers were talking as though some great change was happening. 

“Gulava juice. It's not gonna kill ya, don't worry, kid. Alcohol free!” He promised with a grin, fluffing red hair. The food arrived next, and the smell was enough to steer Cal away from his confusion. It proved to be exactly as good as Prauf promised, and he wolfed it down, his enormous appetite a constant source of amusement for the Abednedo. “You know, for a tiny kid, you sure can pack your food away.”

Cal grinned, wiping his lips. “I had to live of ration bars and dry biscuits for almost a year, once. Trust me, I know when something's worth eating!” He tilted his head to one side. “Thank you. For this, and for...everything. I dunno...what I'd do without you. You've been so kind to me...”

“Hey, don't get too sappy, you know?” Prauf poked his nose. “You can pay me back by working hard.” He added, voice a little gruff, but still fond. Cal shook his head with a smile, and glanced back over to the human and the Rodian, who had struck up their conversation again with the arrival of a slender Pantoran woman with fierce eyes and a frown on her face. They were still chattering about the Empire, and the Senate, their voices hushed and worried.

“What are they talking about...?” Cal murmured.

“Ah, nothing that concerns us, just Core politics. Ignore them. How bad can it really get for us, huh?” Prauf nudged Cal, and the boy grinned a little at the laid back attitude, though a little sliver of worry had begun to crawl up his spine. He didn't know a lot about the inner workings of the Republic, it hadn't been one of his Master's strong suits, the Lasat preferring meditation and saber training over intergalactic politics. Cal turned his attention back to his drink before he could overthink an overheard conversation. He sipped, then grimaced at the taste, and Prauf laughed. “Yeah, the food is good, but the drinks are bantha piss. You'll get used to it, kid, it's about the best we've got here!”

“I'll bear that in...mind...” Cal trailed off as he caught sight of the holo projector above the bar, blinking in confusion as he recognised Coruscant and the Jedi Temple in the grainy footage that was playing on some kind of news reel. The date was in Basic, and it was from about six standard weeks previously, around the time he had crash landed on Bracca. He couldn't hear the report over the noise of the crowd, but he didn't need to hear anything to realise that the Temple, his Temple, his _home_...was burning, smoke rising from the building, one of its great towers crumbled, the smoke blotting the skyline of Coruscant. He froze in shock, the tendril of worry becoming and overwhelming feeling of numbness that washed over him as he watched, paralysed as the Jedi Temple burned in front of him.

Abruptly, it vanished, and he jumped as the reel proceeded to show a speech of some kind, from the Chancellor of the Republic.

_“The Jedi rebellion has been foiled.”_

Shock gave way to startled confusion and dawning horror. Rebellion...? What rebellion? Cal could barely hear the Chancellor's gravelly voice, the newsreel too grainy, the general noise of the cantina too loud. No-one was paying any attention to what was clearly recycled footage from the Core, and he scrambled closer, ignoring Prauf's confused call of his name as he leaned over the bar to squint up at the small holo projector.

_“The remaining Jedi will be hunted down and defeated!”_

He could hear the applause and cheering from the Senators, and he covered his mouth with his hand as nausea roiled in his gut. Hunted down. Defeated. Was that what had happened? Was that why the thirteenth had turned on him and his Master on the _Brave_? He didn't know anything about a Jedi plot. They were peacekeepers, fighting to protect the Republic, not destroy it! He couldn't stop a frightened, horrified whimper escaping his lips as the gravity of the situation hit him. No-one here even seemed to care, no-one was listening, the Core too far away. The war had impacted Bracca, but the lives of the people here had been the same. No-one cared, no-one was watching.

“In order to ensure stability and continuing security...” The Chancellor was saying, and Cal strained to hear him. “The Republic will be reorganised into the first Galactic Empire!”

The colour drained from Cal's face, and he suddenly felt dizzy, unsteady on his feet. He stumbled outside, pushing through the other patrons until he could breath fresh, damp air, rain driving down and immediately plastering his hair to his skin as he stood in shock and horror, the full weight of what he had just seen cascading over him like a flood. He tumbled to his knees, dragging in lungfuls of wet air as he collapsed in on himself. 

_Empire. Rebellion. Hunted down. Defeated._

He barely heard Prauf shaking him, those big hands on his shoulders, his voice faint and distant under the fierce ringing in his ears and the terror and fear and horror rising like a tidal wave of pressure that threatened to drown him completely in the aching burn of despair.

The Jedi were gone. The Republic was gone. 

No-one was coming for him.


	6. Soldiers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience everyone. Real life has been pretty brutal recently. I'm supposed to be getting married very soon, in the middle of a global pandemic, so...stress and anxiety abound during these uncertain times! I hope my little fic can bring one or two people a moment of pleasure :)

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

Cal Kestis was thoroughly fed up of planets where it rained. Bracca, Kashyyyk, Algara, just weeks and weeks of kriffing rain. He pushed his fringe out of his face as he ran through the streets, the dim blue lights that illuminated the doors to the slum-like, narrow windowed houses beginning to fade as the sun rose. 

Beedee chirped, tapping his shoulder, clearly very put out by all this rain. “I know, buddy. Almost there. I can see the port ahead.” He promised his damp companion fondly, reaching back to pat his head. Another whistle. “No, I don't need a stim right now, but thanks for thinking of me.” He chuckled, pulling on the Force to lend him strength. After coming to rely pretty heavily on the drug while they scoured the galaxy for Cordova's holocron, Cere had pleaded with him to try not to use them quite as often, concerned he might be falling towards addiction. He had tried to laugh it off, before being thoroughly challenged by Merrin about what it was and why he was sticking needles into himself. 

He flushed, remembering how he had stuttered and stumbled. The young Nightsister had a wonderfully blunt manner that always seemed to wrong-foot him. “No.” He nodded to himself, resolve strengthening. “No stims yet. But keep 'em there for me, buddy? Just in case we gotta fight.”

It wasn't outside of the realm of possibility. With stormtroopers presumably filling the streets behind him, it was likely they would also have camped out at the port. Above him, the clouds looked to be clearing, the rain easing to a light drizzle as the early morning fog dissipated in the first rays of sunshine trying to break through the high rain clouds.

As he broke through the village limits into open countryside, mountains rose up in the middle distance, ringed by more rain clouds and capped with the faintest fluffs of early snow. Cal thought of Zeffo with its cliffs and chasms and ice caves. It had been almost three months since they had set foot on the Force-saturated planet, and Cal wondered if the Empire had ever decided to leave it alone. He had spent days on those unsteady cliffs, fighting for his life, stormtroopers crawling over the bluffs and shrines like ants. They had all turned their blasters on him, and they had died for their trouble. 

Cal...really didn't want to pay too much attention to his body count. Before Cordova and Beedee and Cere...he'd never struck someone down. As a Padawan, deflecting blaster fire and scrapping with the occasional separatist incursion, he'd downed his fair share of droids, and then the few clones he'd encountered escaping the _Albedo Brave_...but on Bracca, he'd kept his head down and his lightsaber sheathed, staying well away from the stormtroopers that had begun to appear on the planet just weeks after his crash landing there. He let out a steadying breath as he kept moving forward, pushing the dark thoughts about the bodies he'd left in his wake challenging the Empire to wallow in memories. The stormtroopers on Bracca...they had looked too much like the clones for his frightened little thirteen year old self to really cope with.

**\- Bracca, 19BBY -**

_“It's difficult, Master!”_

_“Yes, the path is difficult...it may seem impossible, but with persistence and the Force as your ally, you will overcome any obstacle.”_

He was floating. His Master's voice washed over him, calm and grounding, gentle yet firm. He had a fleeting impression of warm green eyes watching him, then he was floating again, in a grey void. Why couldn't he remember? The words seemed important, but the details of that conversation, what they were doing...he grasped desperately with his mind at the tattered threads of his training bond with his Master, shuddering at the emptiness behind it.

_“Try again. Trust yourself.”_

How could Cal trust himself? He didn't trust anything right now. The frayed bond was painful to touch, and achingly silent, the warm presence of his Master gone, vanished into that sickly grey void. “Master...” He cried, lonely and frightened without it, not used to being alone. Not like this. Darkness began to press in around him, and a heavy sense of despair welled up in the pit of his stomach until he retched, his breath seizing, his blood pounding in his ears until he thought he might burst with the pain of it.

He woke with a gasp, a large, warm hand on his shoulder, and for half a second he thought Jaro Tapal was here, waking him from this terrifying nightmare. He was safe, on the _Brave_. 

Reality rushed back in with the air he dragged into his aching lungs, and he opened his eyes, meeting Prauf's concerned gaze. “Hey, kid.” The Abednedo murmured, his voice hushed. “You're really having a bad night, huh?” He sat down heavily on the narrow but comfortable bed he'd been put in, and Cal sat up, rubbing his eyes. He vaguely remembered Prauf hauling him upright in the rain outside the cantina. Then leading him through the warren of neon-lit streets and tactfully choosing not to comment on the tears that mixed with that rain, rolling down deathly pale freckled cheeks as Cal stumbled along beside him, raw and flayed open and far away. He couldn't have told you where in Choria this little apartment was, or on which floor, or even what the other rooms looked like. Prauf had put him to bed, and left him to pass out and dream.

“I feel terrible.” He finally croaked. His mouth was sour and a headache burned behind his eyes, right at the front of his skull, a dull throbbing he couldn't shake away into the Force. Once, he might have been able to filter the pain. But the Force was an elusive, murky thing even now, and he shied away from its promise of assistance.

“Guess the food didn't agree with you...” Prauf said softly, somewhere between guilty and concerned.

“Yeah, maybe...” Cal murmured, leaning back against the wall. “Thanks. For...putting up with whatever just happened.”

“You wanna talk about it?” Again, there was that freakishly empathic tact. He was giving Cal a clear out despite the very public meltdown and the obvious questions he must want to ask his new young friend. Cal fidgeted, looking up at him and shaking his head, rubbing his temples. Prauf tilted his head, scratching at his wispy hair. “Alright. I won't push. Do you wanna sleep? Or...have a drink?”

Prauf was too kind to him. Anyone else on this forsaken little rock would have probably just pushed him off the top floor of the yard out of pity. Cal was a complete waste of space right now, disorientated and hollow, the news of the Jedi rebellion and their subsequent slaughter ringing horrifying and loud in his mind. His breath, when he drew it in, was shaky and uneven, and he closed his eyes, trying desperately to find his centre. His lessons in meditation, drilled into him since he was two years old and a brand new, wide eyed Initiate, were frustratingly out of reach. “Yeah. I mean...a drink sounds good.” He flushed. “Really...thanks for looking out for me.”

“No trouble, kid. C'mon.” Prauf stood, and exited through the narrow door, having to sidle through sideways. Cal glanced around the room he definitely didn't remember from earlier in the evening. It was small, and narrow, with yellow painted walls and a tall, thin window looking out over yet another neon-lit street. A small cupboard sat in the corner, and his bed was built into the wall, but it was a hundred times more cosy and pleasant than the stifling dorm room he'd been living in thus far. He stood, rubbing his eyes again and feeling oddly itchy and restless as he followed Prauf into another room that only looked vaguely familiar. Force, but he must have been out of it after that little incident at the cantina...

He shook his head, sinking onto an old but comfortable couch as he looked around at the small living space. It was narrow like the bedroom, the furniture a little sparse, the floors bare but for some rugs and the odd abandoned blanket. Nothing like the clean, tidy spaces of the Temple – there were bits and pieces of junk everywhere, clothes and boxes of belongings stacked high in the space. But it was strangely welcoming, and Prauf pressed a glass of something warm into his hands. “Here. Sorry it's a bit of a state in here, I keep meaning to unpack but I thought I'd move out again eventually. This place is sorta...right above a train line and it gets a bit noisy, but the rents are going up all the time, so...you know. Still here.”

Cal felt a rush of fondness for his friend. “It's perfect. And anywhere's quieter than the Scrapper dorms.” He promised, cupping his hands around the mug in his hands.

“You got that right.” A new voice yawned, slightly accented with something Cal couldn't place, scratchy and rough with age. He turned, a little startled, to see a very tall, half dressed Togruta male with deep blue skin sloping out of what must have been a 'fresher, judging from the waft of steam behind him. “Used to live in them myself, back in the day, daresay they ain't gotten any better.” His slang was basic but that accent was distinctly mid-rim, and the ends of his lekku were faded, matching the wrinkles around his dark eyes. “You staying here, then?”

“Y...yeah.” Cal blinked rapidly, having not expected to see another being. He still felt distinctly out of sorts. “Er...”

“I'm Sala. Sala Berro. Engineer, like the big guy.” He grinned, sharp incisors catching the light. “Might be seeing you around. I live across the hall, but my 'fresher is janked, can't strongarm the slug of a landlord into fixing it.”

Cal blinked again, nodding slowly. Nothing really made sense right now, least of all the sudden appearance of this stranger, and he couldn't shake the grainy pictures of the burning Temple from his mind. Distracted and still reeling, he simply mumbled, “Right.”

“Thanks Prauf, I owe you one.” Berro seemed to get he wasn't going to be much of a conversation.

“You owe me about six, you damn poacher, get outta here, it's late and I wanna hit the sack.” Prauf grunted, his voice laced with the same gentle fondness it held when he was speaking to Cal. Maybe Cal had found the one truly decent being on Bracca...? Once the Togruta had left, silence descended for a beat, before Prauf laughed.

“He's alright. Don't work on the same rig as him, but we go out for drinks sometimes.”

“Is anyone else gonna pop out of rooms tonight?” Cal mumbled as he sipped at his drink, which was creamy and faintly spiced. Warmth blossomed in his chest as he drank.

“Nah. Just me here, kiddo. And now you, too, if you wanna stay. You know, after seeing half naked strangers coming out of 'freshers every which way.” He nudged Cal gently, voice a gentle tease. Cal relaxed into the couch, closing his eyes again and sipping the drink. This was fine. He'd be fine.

He had to be fine.

He must have fallen asleep on the couch, as he woke with a blanket over him and his half finished drink set on the caf table beside it. The faint pink light of dawn was filtering through the thin blinds on the window, and his neck felt stiff, propped up on a couple of cushions. He drew in a long breath, sitting up and wincing as his shoulder popped. Work was going to be tough today, between the disrupted sleep and the shock of the Temple's fall still numbing his mind. He rolled over, wishing he could just sink into the couch and disappear. Was this what his Master had wanted for him, when he gave his life? This misery and fear? He curled up for a moment, wallowing in self pity, before the squeak of a steel door and Prauf's appearance with a vague promise of breakfast disturbed him enough to jog him back to the present. He dragged his tired body off the couch with a yawn. “Hey. Sorry about last night. I...it was...”

“You don't have to say anything, Cal.” Prauf promised kindly. “Something got to you, and we got you home and to bed. It's a new morning, and the shipbreaking yard is waiting. Lucky you.” He grinned, tendrils twitching fondly. “Now come get breakfast, and we'll kick off, yeah?”

Cal smiled a little, rubbing his sleepy eyes. “Y...yeah. Thanks.”

Breakfast was simple, warm bread and a spicy jam Cal instantly decided he liked, and he had time to glance longingly at the fresher before they were out, Prauf having to fiddle with the control panel for the door before it would lock. “You can shower when we get back. Not much point having one before going into the yard.” He laughed, and Cal flushed, jogging to keep up with the Abednedo as they walked towards an elevator. It looked like the newest thing in the whole building, and was nowhere near as worryingly rickety as the ones Cal had travelled in before.

He stayed quiet as they travelled, watching their path to try and memorise it the way he had failed to do the previous night. Dawn was well and truly here now, and Choria was teeming with beings already. He stuck close to Prauf as they picked their way to the train station – the name of which was as unimaginative as all the rest he'd seen. East Quarter Level One, Block Five. Bracca was truly an industrial workhouse, not a holiday destination. It was standing room only on the train, and Prauf got chatting with another engineer while Cal watched the world go by. Without conversation, he dwelt uncomfortably on his situation. He had only intended to be here a few weeks, until he was rescued. But now that the promise of rescue had been thoroughly ripped away, he had no idea what to do.

He supposed all he could do was work, and keep his head down. He didn't even know if this new...Empire...responsible for exterminating the Jedi might be looking for him. If they were...he was in trouble. He was just a kid, not fully trained, and whilst the _Albedo Brave_ had been blasted out of the sky by Maser Tapal during their escape, someone might still come looking. The train shuddered to a halt, screeching against the rusting tracks and he eased closer to Prauf as more people got on.

People...and clone troopers.

Cal froze, heart seizing in his chest as his grip on the handrail grew white-knuckled. The plastoid armour, the distinctive helmets, the blasters in their hands. Suddenly, Cal was back on the Venator high above the planet once more, trapped in bleak grey halls with the crackle of blaster fire bleeding red all around him as he ran for his life, half out of his mind with fear and confusion.

_“It's the little one! I've got him!”_

_“Take him out!”_

_“Find the Padawan. He can't have gone far.”_

_“Kill him!”_

Their voices, the same and yet different, just like them, rang in his ears, and he forced himself to stay absolutely still, eyes wide as he peered at the group of three from under his hood. They were here for him. They had come to hunt him down, to kill him.

They didn't move, talking amongst themselves in quiet, tinny voices, muted by their helmets. As Cal's initial flood of fear subsided, he realised with a rush of nervous relief that he wasn't looking at clone troopers at all. One was a few inches shorter than the other two, another broader in the shoulder, and their uniforms were a little different. A new symbol, one that looked a little like the Republic roundel, only...sharper, and coloured with red, was emblazoned on their armbands. It was nothing like the Jedi firebird, or the Open Circle insignia that some of the Generals had adopted towards the end of the war. They were not the clones who had killed his Master.

Still, it was jarring to see soldiers here. There was a small local militia on Bracca that Cal was aware of, but when he and Master Tapal had been stationed high above, there had been no wider military presence on the planet's surface at all, either Republic or Separatist. 

He wasn't the only one startled by their appearance. He could see people nervously eyeing both the blaster and the symbol and whispering amongst themselves. He heard the word 'Imperial' once or twice, and a sense of foreboding washed over him. Prauf nudged him. “Hey. They look pretty heavy.” He muttered. “Don't recognise 'em.”

“I think they're troopers. Like the clones the old republic used to have.” Cal tried to explain, still watching the three soldiers warily. 

“Doesn't explain what they're doing here.” Prauf replied caustically, clearly unhappy with their new passengers.

“Get used to them.” The woman Prauf had been speaking to chimed in softly, her vocoder rasping under her hood. Cal had to lean closer so he could hear her. “This new Emperor of ours is shipping out soldiers all over the place. Haven't you seen the posters? Join the glorious Empire!” She mocked, keeping her voice low. “The Guilds aren't gonna be happy about it...but apparently this is all about punishing them for humouring the Separatists during the war.”

“You say that like the war's over.” Cal murmured, frowning.

“Tch. Where have you been for a month, under a rock? The war's over. The seppies are gone, so's the Republic. Now it's just this enterprising lot.” She nodded at a brightly coloured poster with the same symbol emblazoned on it tacked onto the side of the carriage, hidden under a swirl of fresh graffiti. Cal hadn't seen it when he'd first gotten onto the train.

_Join the Empire._

Cal's skin prickled uncomfortably as the train ground to a halt again and the woman pushed past them to get off, nodding to them and giving the trio of soldiers a wide berth. The young Padawan shared an uneasy look with Prauf. “What do you think it means?” He murmured. “For us...?”

“I dunno, kid.” The Abednedo admitted. “Nothing's changed on this rock in all the time I've been here, so...hopefully it don't mean anything. Maybe a few soldiers, a bit of 'structural reorganisation' with the high ups, that kinda thing. Some new rules and regulations. I guess we should be safe. We're protected, you know.” He poked Cal's Scrapper tattoo, poking out between his leather glove and his rolled up sleeve. “I know you said you were press-ganged into this gig, but that thing is pretty handy.” He promised, squeezing the boy's arm. “Although...best you stay close, anyway.” He decided as they drew close to the shipbreaking yard stop and the train groaned and screeched its way to a final stop.

Cal glanced back at the troopers as he and Prauf jumped down onto the platform, that dark sense of foreboding and unease curling in the pit of his stomach, nausea rising and threatening to bring up his breakfast. He was under no illusion that this new Empire was responsible for the massacre of the Jedi. If they found him, they would kill him, too. He would become a statistic, just like those poor kids trapped in the burning Temple, and all the Knights and Masters spread across the galaxy, gunned down by their own soldiers like Master Tapal.

All he could do was hide.


	7. The Cutter

**\- Algara II, 14BBY -**

The port was quiet, this late at night. Cal kept his hood up and his head down as he wove between the few beings that were around, glad he wasn't the only one hudding into a cloak. Sometimes the rain could be a mercy, he thought as he deliberately avoided two official looking men guarding a shipment of grey, nondescript boxes. If he weren't in a hurry, he might have taken a closer look – and certainly Beedee's enquiring trill suggested it, but it wasn't worth attracting any more attention. If he had already been tracked here, and the Empire was closing in, he needed to be off planet, and soon.

“No, buddy. Not this time. Just gotta keep our heads down. Do me a favour, jump down and see if you can find this guy we're looking for? If you scan the ship registration numbers...look for something unusual, something that might belong to a smuggler. Something that looks a little _too_ clean and tidy, you got it?”

An indignant chirp.

Cal chuckled. “I know, I know. You're very smart and you know exactly what to look for.” Beedee's answering squeak sounded so human he had to grin as the little droid scrambled off his back and scurried off into the darkness. Cal watched him go fondly, then continued his own search, sticking to the shadows and drifting along just fast enough to look like he had a purpose, and wasn't just loitering. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and the ever-present sensation of impending danger kept him tense. He had been running from the Empire for weeks, and they snapped at his heels with all the tenacity of a pack of angry dogs. Vader's dark presence lurked at the edges of his mind, the threat he presented now that he knew Cal was alive and actively opposing him real and fierce. He had yet to encounter another inquisitor, for which he was exceptionally grateful – he might have bested Trilla Suduri and Masana Tide, but that didn't mean someone stronger wasn't waiting to bring him in.

A shrill cheeping noise interrupted his thoughts, and he smiled as Beedee reappeared, climbing back up his leg. “You found him? Already? Good job, buddy.” He followed the little droid's instructions, arriving in a bay with the rusty label of hangar four. Crouched beside the rear engine of a slim modified blockade runner doing what was clearly a preflight check was a scruffy looking man with a mop of dirty blond hair mostly hidden under a leather pilot's cap. He had a battered brown duster coat and was cursing quietly.

“Nate Merrick?” Cal called across the hangar.

The man froze, looking up with wide, dark eyes. He looked young, maybe only a few years older than Cal. “Who's asking?” He asked, voice a heavy outlander drawl.

Throwing caution to the wind, very aware the Empire were very likely right on his heels, he met the man's eyes. “My name is Cal. Sheera Varis said you could get me off planet.” Cal replied, drawing in a long breath and hoping that the Pantoran woman hadn't just delivered him into the hands of a bounty hunter.

“...Sheera?” The man tilted his head, looking Cal up and down, his manner a little stand offish and wary. “Don't tell me. You're the reason the Imps are swarming this place right now.” Cal winced, which was apparently answer enough. Merrick cursed – Cal didn't recognise the language, but the inflection was enough for him to recognise the sentiment. “Can you pay, kid?”

“Yes.” Cal replied shortly. The Force whispered a warning in his ear, and he tensed, looking behind him. “Please. I have to get out of here.” He murmured, appealing a little desperately.

“...Get in the ship. I'll get us in the air.”

Cal's shoulders sagged with relief, and with a gasp of thanks, he scrambled up the narrow gangplank and into the cramped living quarters of the ship. Merrick followed him in, and Cal scrambled back, staying well out of the way as the smuggler threw himself into the pilot's chair and fired up the ship's engines. A battered old pilot droid shuddered to life in the copilot's seat, and Cal dropped himself into the one remaining chair as Merrick started the take off sequence. “Alright, Vera, let's get moving...” He muttered to the creaky droid, and with no preamble, they took off. Cal's heart was pounding as alarms blared and the port officers waved and shouted for them to stop, but Merrick and the old V3R4 droid were clearly very used to quick getaways. Stormtroopers were already pouring in, but Merrick was faster than any of them, turning his nippy little blockade runner around and hurtling them up and out of the hangar. Cal clung to his seat as Beedee screamed with glee, bouncing on his shoulders with delight as they roared out of the port, through the thick cloud and into the planet's foggy atmosphere. His friend's excitement was infectious, and Cal laughed aloud, sinking back in his chair. “That was _fast_.”

“The Cantra is a good ship. Hope Nar Shaddaa is alright for you, buddy, 'cause that's where we're headed.” Merrick called back as they broke atmosphere seconds later and hit the darkness of space. Cal sat up a little straighter and blinked. Nar Shaddaa, the Hutt controlled ecumenopolis of a moon that was home to some of the most notorious crime lords and bounty hunters in the galaxy...maybe that wasn't a bad call. Free from the Empire's grip and deep in Hutt space, it was a good place to outrun his pursuers. Besides. If he was still around...Cal had a friend there.

**\- Bracca, 18BBY -**

The growing Imperial presence on Bracca had changed the whole atmosphere of the planet Cal now called home. In the eight months since he had discovered the fate of the Jedi, Bracca had changed, slowly but inexorably, the power of the Guilds waning, crumbling under the ferocious might of the Empire. Taxes rose, wages shrank, working conditions deteriorated, and Cal listened patiently to endless complaints from Prauf as his previously reasonable engineer pay slipped again and again. Jobs were fought for fiercely, and it was only Prauf's determination and Cal's efficiency and affinity with mechanics that allowed the pair to stay ahead and keep the work coming in. They worked hard, but their friendship had certainly solidified over the last few cycles, and though they often took different jobs , they always found time to stop for a drink together before heading back to their apartment, finding relaxation together where they could. 

Of course, the Imperial presence didn't help Cal recover from his trauma, and he was plagued by nightmares whenever he slept. He felt like he was always looking over his shoulder, the stormtroopers that looked so much like clones haunting his steps as he kept his head down, his connection to the Force severed, and his mouth shut.

And yet, sometimes...there was a peace, to be found when he was working. A strange harmony and calm he settled into when there was nothing but him and whatever he was working on, whether it was repairing parts of an enormous Lucrehulk engine, or pulling apart the underbelly of a tiny, beaten up little fighter than was good for nothing but scrap. 

Today's job was far from peaceful, however. He itched with the prickling creep of his dark memories as he burrowed deep into the wiring of an old Venator reactor, intimately familiar with the old republic design. He had spent so much of his apprenticeship on one of these ships, and though the side of the ship was blown open and the gantries already rusted and falling apart, he couldn't help but picture her as she once was, grand and forbidding, chasing down Separatist ships with all the might of the GAR and the Jedi with her. He shivered as a chill wind rippled through the open hull, whispering through the reactor room and ruffling his hair. There was nothing left of his Padawan cut now, the tangled mess of his red hair growing long and unruly, and he ran oil-dirty fingers through it, pushing it out of his eyes as he craned his neck, peering deeper into the reactor.

“I think this one's a bit beyond hope, kiddo.” 

Cal startled so badly he hit his head on the casing. “Karabast!” He swore, curling up and clutching his head as it throbbed. He crawled out of the dead reactor, looking up at the newcomer. A middle aged human with dark hair that was silvering at the tips and dark, amused eyes stared back at him, arms folded across his chest. He wore the same uniform as Cal, though he had a few seniority stripes on his chestplate, and a foreman's whistle on his belt. His jumpsuit was also the stark black of a Cutter class Scrapper, unlike the Rigger's blue of Cal's overalls.

“That's a word I've not heard in a long time.” The man grinned, amusement on his face. “You've spent time with the Lasat.” His voice was a croaky rasp that spoke of a lifetime of smoking.

“Once or twice.” Cal replied a little warily. “Uh...”

“Don't freak out. I'm not here to pinch a job. Just the opposite, actually. My name's Tabb. Vickery Tabb, but you can call me Tabbers. I can promise you the job I got for you is better than sitting there all day trying to rewire a dead reactor and getting a few measley credits when you bring home nothing but the promise that it is, in fact, dead. I need a Rigger – someone skinnier than me up on the bridge of this beastie. If you help me out, I'll give you a quarter cut of the pay.”

Cal stood up, rolling his shoulders as he considered the stranger in front of him, “...Make it a third of it, and you've got a deal, Tabbers. Call it injury pay.” He grinned, rubbing the bump on his head.

Tabbers blinked at him, wrinkles on his face deepening for a moment. After a beat, he laughed, loud and long, shaking his head at the younger boy's audacity. “Oh, I like you. You got it, kiddo. What's your name?”

“Cal Kestis.” He tilted his head, relaxing a little. Most of the guild scrappers here were generally decent people, if a little weary and rough around the edges. They just wanted to work, and drink, and go about their lives. Bracca might be dismal, but it was their home, and the scrappers scrurried across the sprawling surface of the planet like the rats the lived amongst, scratching out a living just as he was. 

“Alright, Cal Kestis. One third.” The man held out his hand, and Cal shook it. As his fingers brushed a thick iron ring on Tabbers' finger, the Force reared up from deep within his core, whispering the faintest echo of a hard life spent squirrelling money away, and the vague sense of hope for something better. Cal shook himself a little, clenching and unclenching his fists. He couldn't connect with the Force at all and didn't want to try, but sometimes his psychometry still sent him little echoes from the things he touched.

“Come on...” Tabbers' voice snapped him free from the echo, and he followed as the man led the way through the crumbling remains of the Venator. Cal tried to distract himself from the painful familiarity of the corridors and the vague sense of nausea that the Force echo had left him with by observing the man's purposeful stride ahead of him. He was built big, well suited to being a Cutter, the sleeves rolled up his arms exposing large biceps. Most of his jobs would be better paid than Cal's, and almost all of them would be handling heavy machinery. The Cutters tore the ships into pieces small enough for the Riggers to pull to pieces, but they did occasionally work together for especially tricky jobs. Cal was slowly learning his way around the complicated, hierarchical system the guilds employed to manage their staff, but some of it was still over his head, no matter how patiently Prauf explained it to him.

Tabbers seemed to know where he was going at least, meaning Cal could follow the man's steps without looking too hard at the bones of his old life, grey and forbidding around him as they made their way through the dimly lit corridors and up the elevators to the bridge. Cal had rarely been allowed up on the bridge of the _Albedo Brave_ , considered too young to be part of the heavy discussions held up there between the clone commanders and his Master. This one didn't look all that familiar, half of it sheared away, wind whistling through the hole. “You're cutting it apart...?”

“Yeah.” Tabbers grinned. “There's a few decent parts still kicking around up here, but I think the Guild is more interested in the information in the console's data banks here. It's all encrypted, so I'm supposed to hack the server console off in one piece to send it off to the Spooks up top to deconstruct and decrypt. But...I ran into a bit of a problem. I can't just hack through the casing here, because the mainframe is a total patched up mess. And if I catch the wrong wire...poof.”

“...All that data gets destroyed?” Cal guessed, looking dubiously at the central terminal. Tabbers had hacked it up, and there were a dozen wires sticking out next to a small hole that opened up into a dark void under the control station.

“Yup. Not to mention I could short circuit every power outlet in the ship. And..no data, no paycheck. I'm not cut out for nitpicky stuff, but you're a Rigger, and you're skinny. I've chopped a big enough hole for someone small to squeeze in and separate that big tangle of wires behind the server.”

“Tabbers...” Cal looked into the hole. “I'm not an electrician!”

“It's alright! I know which ones to cut, I just can't get to them.” Tabbers promised. “C'mon. Easiest hundred credits you'll ever make.”

“Wait, a hundred?”

“I said a third, didn't I? There's something on this server the guild wants. It's worth it.” Cal's eyes widened. His jobs usually netter him between thirty and forty credits, and whilst he had no real understanding of how much that was worth outside of Bracca, planetside, that was a lot of days rent, and several food shops. 

“I'm in. Just...please don't let me electrocute myself.” He grimaced, shrugging off his bulky padded chestplate and wriggling his skinny body down into the hole Tabbers had made with the handheld Cutter. It was dark, and smelled faintly musty, but he kept wriggling until he made it into the small void below the console. The tiny space hummed with the electromagnetic buzz that the small generator that powered the console was producing, and he wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell of burnt wiring. It really was a mess, but...he could see what Tabbers was after, a small black box that acted as a data bank for everything the console needed to access. It was...very well connected to the rest of the console, but if he was careful, he could probably detach it. “Alright, I'm in.”

“Well done, Freckles, knew you could get in there!”

“Freckles?!”

“Have you seen yourself, kiddo? I could dot-to-dot Choria on your face and the whole Bracca train network on your arms.” Tabbers teased. Cal rolled his eyes.

Just...tell me what I'm supposed to be going.” He huffed, face tinged pink. He settled into his little crawl space as Tabbers talked him through dismantling the databank from the ship's network, managing to disconnect it with little more than mild static shocks when he brushed too close to a bare wire. Once the box was free he pushed it back through the gap, then wriggled out, taking Tabbers' outstretched hand. The Cutter pulled him through the space, crowing his victory. “Knew you could do it! Let's get this little beauty up to the foreman and claim ourselves some hazard pay!” Cal couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm, brushing himself off and tugging his chestplate and gloves back on.

If he wanted his cut, he had little choice but to jog along behind the Cutter as he made his way out of the Bridge and onto one of the narrow barges that zipped the workers between their jobs. Not everyone got to ride them – more often than not Cal had to run and climb wherever he needed to go. So this was a nice reprieve, being able to sit on the barge as Tabbers flew them to what was presumably his boss's office, another rickety room built out of scrap, perched precariously amongst the metal mountains. By now, Cal was used to the sprawling strangeness of Choria's buildings, and he waited on the barge while his companion vanished into the office, the rusting, faded blue painted door creaking as it swung shut.

Tabbers, it turned out, was as good as his word, counting out a third of the credits to Cal once he had reappeared, clapping him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Freckles. Your skinny little ass just saved me a lot of hassle.”

“You nearly got me electrocuted!” Cal retorted, though he knew it was an exaggeration. A few static shocks were nothing compared to some of the bruises and injuries he'd acquired in the last few months.

“You didn't die, though, did you?” Tabbers fluffed his red hair. “I had every faith in you. If I'd have gone in there with my Cutters and caught those live wires, I'd have short circuited the whole system and probably fried everyone on that ship, including you.” Cal snorted, shaking his head. Tabbers just grinned at him, smile warm, eyes crinkling. For the slightest of moments, he reminded Cal of one of the saber training Masters in the Coruscant Temple, ageing and crinkly, but kind and soft as he gently corrected the stances of the Initiates he was teaching. 

He quickly shook the memory aside, feeling faintly sick.

Tabbers must have caught his odd reaction, as he squeezed Cal's shoulder. “At the very least I owe you a drink. Maybe a non alcoholic one, mind, you only look about ten.”

“I'm fourteen.” Cal huffed indignantly, straightening up and rolling back his shoulders.

“Still not old enough. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll serve you some Sika milk if you ask very nicely.” The old Cutter teased, nudging his shoulder. “If I'm feeling generous I'll add a drop of Corellian whiskey, that'll turn your hair a shade redder.” He belly-laughed at the indignant look on Cal's face, doubling over with mirth. “Alright, alright. I'll stop teasing. Hey...tell you what. No whiskey, but...let me show you something.” He stopped walking and pulled a small box out of his pocket, unhooking a pair of headphones from his belt. “Listening to decent tunes can make this crappy job a whole lot less boring. Have a go? These guys have just started playing in some of the cantinas around Nal Hutta. They have a good sound. It's a bit heavy, but pretty good to work to. Makes the day go quicker.”

Cal took the little device curiously. Music was not something he was overly familiar with. Some of the Jedi played instruments, and he and some of the other Initiates had shared popular songs from the Coruscanti holonet in the creche, but apart from the tinny tunes played in the Choria cantinas he frequented with Prauf, he hadn't really listened to anything in a while. He spun the wheel of the small player, and tilted his head to one side as listened to the first few beats of something rough and darkly heavy, and yet...oddly soulful. It seemed so perfectly suited to the outer rim sprawl of the Guilds he lived in, and he laughed, tapping his heel to the steady beat of drums and the heavy growl of several male voices. “Oh...yeah, I see why you like it.” He admitted. “It's good.”

“Makes this dump a bit less boring, at least.” Tabbers smiled, clearly a little fond of Cal already. His grin widened as his eyes lit with an idea. “You know what, you keep that one. It's a bit battered, but it's still good. I have a newer one I can use. It's full of songs, you never know, one day you'll have as good a taste in sounds as an old Cutter like me.” His hand fluffed Cal's hair again. “Now come on – I desperately need some decent Huttese home brew.”

Cal...seriously doubted that anything the Hutts created was anything close to decent, and he pulled a face at the thought of drinking Huttese home brew _anything_ but...Tabbers seemed genuine, and Cal was very short of friends here on Bracca. He looked down at his new music player and smiled a little. “...Thank you for this. I...really. Thanks.” He felt inexplicably emotional. He might have lost everything in the Purge, but here on this backwards, lonely little place he'd found little bits and pieces of a new life, small kindnesses and quiet promises that whilst the world seemed dark for someone like him, there were still people who cared about him. He must have looked as emotional as he felt, as Tabbers punched him in the arm, looking a tad discomfited with his reaction.

“...Aw, c'mon, kid. Don't get all mushy, it's nothing. Just a present for a job well done, alright?” He laughed. “Now let's go! Drinks!” Tabbers took his arm and practically dragged him off the barge to a narrow turbo lift that would take them back down to Choria's underbelly. Cal looked up at the Cutter a little helplessly, pulled along in the man's exuberant wake, clutching his new music player and his unusually high scraping of pay for the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who remembers Tabbers? Haaaa, I wanted to include him so badly as another canon acquaintance of Cal's, and his character just evolved. I actually really like him. We are officially at the half way mark of Broken Pieces now! I hope you're all still enjoying it! :D


End file.
